Focus Group StudyE-book Readers for the academic Environment

Risa Teshigawara, Veronica GomezDecember 19th, 2012

Introduction Many people use e-book

readers instead of carrying paper books around with them.

It is rare to see university students using e-book readers for class or to study with.

e-book readers appear to be used mainly leisure reading *Pew Research Center for the People and Press

Objective of this Study To discuss how e-book readers can be

improved in order to be used in academic environments

To gather useful information, such as student and faculty opinions, suggestions, and ideas for e-book readers

Research Questions What are the advantages and

disadvantages that the use of e-book readers may provide to students?

Are there hardware and/or software improvements that can be made to e-book readers to make them better suited for academic use?

What functionalities should e-book readers offer to be most useful for students?

Setting Place: Classroom PV-1 @ AUP Time: November 15th, 2012

15:20 – 16:40

Participants

• A total of 6 participants were comprised of students and faculty.

• A Computer Science professor was invited in order to provide insight from a faculty perspective

• 2 Librarians attended and contributed their opinions

SONY PRS-T2 Nexus 7

Storage Capacity

2GB 8, 16, or 32GB

Display E Ink display / backlit E-ink

LCD capacitive touch screen

Size 173 × 110 × 9.1 mm 198.5×120×10.56 mm

Weight 167g 340g

Screen Size

Screen size (90 × 120mm)

180mm diagonal with 16:00 wide screen

Battery Up to 2 months Up to 9.5 hours

Touch yes yes

Comparison of the two Devices

PROCEDURE

Discussion lasted for one hour

20 minutes of testing time of the devices were allotted to participants

Participants filled out pre-focus group questionnaire

Informed Consent Forms were distributed

Participants were arranged to sit in a circular formation

1 moderater and 1 note-taker

Pre-focus group questionnaire Name E-mail Address Gender Age Academic Year Major/ Faculty Position Which tools/resources do you use to complete your

class assignments? Do you own an e-book reader? If so, which one? If you do not have an e-book reader, which device

have you used to read?

Result of the questionnaire

Information resources and tools most used by participants.

Results of Device TestingNexus 7

Pros Attractive screen display Wi-Fi access Page flipping animation

is clear Fast Able to change font

quickly Easier to concentrate

when reading versus Sony reader

Easy to bookmark a page

Cons Feels heavy for the size of

the device The text to speech option

was difficult to deactivate Touch screen is intimidating

since a few errors were made when attempting to flip the page or use another feature

Bright backlit screen is tiring on the eyes

Clumsy highlighting buttons

Results of Device TestingSony PRS-T2

Pros

Lightweight and compact

Cons

Slow Difficult to bookmark a page Difficult to tell when a page

has been flipped and the flickering of the screen, which indicated a page flip gives the impression that, the battery of the device is dying

Need for two hands when using the device

Features requested by participants for an improved e-book reader

Hardware1. Large storage capacity 2. Resistance of the devices3. Have two separate physical

screens just like paper books so that two different applications may be opened and viewed at the same time

Software1. Internet access2. Online dictionary resource3. Translation of words4. Citation5. Easy annotations6. Create notes and

bookmarks7. Ability to switch the device

interface language8. Text to speech feature so

that you can listen to a book hands-free

Would you buy an e-book reader for academic use? Regardless of the

improvements that the participants had themselves suggested, a majority felt that they would still not purchase an e-book reader

Yes; 2; 33%

No; 4; 67%

Chart 3: Percentage of participants who would buy an ideal e-book reader satisfying all the requirements they had expressed.

Discussion current e-book readers do not meet the

needs and wants of the majority of the academic community.

Even if e-book readers were adapted to include the list of desired features expressed by participants, it would not ensure that their old study/work habits would be adaptable to a new electronic portable version

Conclusion Most of the participants would not use

the devices for academic use Students are more used to reading on

the paper books. There were only 6 participants, so a

research with more people involved would have better results

Merci!