I. Introduction
EBooks are not effective in the learning process of students for it distracts their attention. When reading that statement, many people will think differently. Some would argue that each person has their own method of learning. By the adjustment of their preferred method, they would learn something easier. I would think the same too at first. After conducting research, I would later find out a different outcome. Some people prefer to read printed books for studying. In this argumentative research paper, I will show how eBook is actually not effective for student because of various factors involved in their use. Nonetheless, for a balanced treatment of this argumentative paper, I will present initially the benefits and disadvantages of using either electronic book or traditional book before further supporting my thesis using scholarly and related reputable sources.
II. Printed Books versus eBooks
First, in terms of storage, an eBook is better because I can store as many books as I want depending on the digital capacity of my device’s storage disk. In other words, I can store more than one book in a device compared to a single printed book. EBooks can be stored in an iPad, for instance. On the other hand, a bulk of traditional books are difficult to be stored in a limited space (e.g., bookshelves) unless it is really intended for traditional books (Harness). However, the comparison that I made does not necessarily follow that eBooks are much more effective in students’ learning process. Some students may not read a large number of books but would rather try to make it easier for their part. For instance, students may simply look at the title of a book and its abstract so that he or she already knows the gist of what he or she is reading. Hence, the number of eBooks may actually discourage some students to read more in contrast when a student is simply handed a single printed book to read on, study, analyze and interpret.
Second, in view of convenience, eBooks are handy to be carried just about everywhere. It only takes one gadget to store and carry a lot of eBooks. As long as disk space allows the storage of more and more eBooks, I can continue downloading and saving them in my gadget. In case my storage disk already contains many eBooks, I can upload them in a cloud storage device, buy a new storage device and transfer them in, or simply delete previously stored eBooks. Unlike printed books, they have more weight as compared to a single electronic device where eBooks are. However, convenience does not simply equate to learning effectiveness. Depending on the students’ learning styles, such as the older generation, they still prefer using printed books because they find it easier to jot down their comments on the margins of their traditional books. Although it can also be done with eBooks, some people still find it inconvenient because they look for other features of eBook readers that are not present in them (e.g., simplicity). If I had been accustomed to simply underlining, sketching, etc. on the margins of a printed book, I might as well prefer it more than an eBook whose many interactive features may seem daunting despite the fact that it may still lack a few other features (e.g., sketching on the margin) for my “personalized learning experience” (Huang 703).
In relation to convenience, an eBook can be purchased with a click away from the Internet, that is, instead of going to the bookstore to buy it. Mostly, I can simply use a search engine or go directly to a website that sells eBooks. Following a few instructions to pay using my credit card, I can buy as many eBooks that I want depending on my needs and budget. On the other hand, should I want to have a printed book, I still have to wait for it to be delivered on my doorstep as I wait for a couple of hours to several days. When I have to order again a printed book or go directly to a nearest physical bookstore, I need to expend more time, resources, and energy just to have it unlike when I simply order it over the Internet. Despite of that analogy about the seeming advantage of an electronic book to a printed book, the effectiveness of eBooks in the learning of students is still dependent on them. No matter how many eBooks they have, unless they have the skills and passion to learn, it would not make a significant difference. There could even be cases where a student learn more as a result of using his or her resources to find a printed book that hard, which then resulted to loving the material even more and more as he or she overcomes the initial challenges of, for example, lending it from his or her public or school library.
Third, eBooks are inexpensive as compared to printed books because of various factors. An eBook can easily be produced by the same author who also made a printed book. The explanation with this is that eBooks can be printed at a cheaper cost than printed books. The former may only require an electronic gadget while the latter also requires it but with the addition of printers, inks, papers, printing cost, inter alia. Likewise, an eBook can be made available in a variety of ways depending on the creativity of the author and its support teams. Many eBooks can be in “rich interactive” multimedia form, but traditional books only have the simplicity of its production (Sargeant 454). In addition, eBooks can be uploaded by a publisher and then be accessible by a worldwide audience – that is, locally, nationally, and internationally. Then again, eBooks are not the end-all and be-all concerning students’ learning. Some authors still prefer their books to be printed in hardbound because they do not want their works to be available online and then distributed illegally (i.e., due to instances of plagiarism and copyright infringements) just by anyone who makes a countless copies of them. Hence, such an author’s thinking and decision to make his or her book in mortar-and-brick form teach learners to be wary in their use of another person’s original work. They have to make in-text citations and references to avoid plagiarism.
Fourth, in connection to cost effectiveness, eBooks are less expensive than traditional books. EBooks can be produced, reused, etc. with less hassles on the part of the persons concerned despite a few disadvantages such as not resalable due to copyright (Bury). Unlike traditional books, which are more expensive to produce and entails more resources on the part of the author and those involved in the project of production, marketing, and distribution, eBooks are cheaper. Further, eBooks can save a person (e.g., an author, buyer or seller) more time, money and labor because they simply need a digital platform, website, or online publisher. As such, once an eBook is published, it tend not to run out of stock . Additionally, to an eBook buyer, once he or she purchased it in the Internet, he or she can instantly open it up to read, search, find keywords, scan, and so on which he or she wants to go to or read. In contrast, printed books would exactly be the opposite. However, as I argued above and continue to claim here in this essay, eBooks are not that effective when it comes to augmenting students’ learning despite their cost efficiency. Rather, cost-effectiveness is not always tantamount to learning efficiency. The important thing here is that learning effectiveness is more about what the students acquire as a transferable form of knowledge and not simply information overloading, as the case may be in some circumstances. Most often, learning effectiveness is a product of efficacious teaching-learning processes and practices, as well as, good parenting . Specifically, when parents and children want to expand their shared reading experience using traditional or electronic books, the latter may nonetheless complement the former as a promising context for the development of children’s language and not the other way around .
Fifth, eBooks offer many interesting features other than having built-in interactive rich multimedia (Sargeant). EBooks do not only have texts, but may also come with audio-readers and fonts, pictures, videos, animation, games, hyperlinks, etc. embedded in them. An eBook reader is used to open up an eBook just like any traditional book where pages are flipped. Moreover, an individual can even change the color of the fonts, resolution, brightness, contrast, and so forth when viewing an eBook, for instance, in a Smartphone. Many eBook readers, in particular, even have value-added features, such as free subscriptions to other services of the publisher when I opted to buy a certain number of eBooks from them. In comparison, printed books mostly have an inadequacy of features common in many eBooks. Be that as it may, it does not necessarily the case that learn better when using eBooks. Some researchers even consider some features of eBooks as distractions to better learning. The glare of the screen of an electronic device when a reader views an eBook is a concern for learning. As an individual keeps on reading a couple number of eBook pages, he or she may experienced greater eye strain and fatigue caused by the brightness of a device’s screen. Hence, eBooks may actually impede normal learning of a text due to such a concern.
Sixth, eBooks may have most of the advantages I can think of, but never can it be directly equated with increased student learning outcome. EBooks were even found to destroy traditional publishing of printed books because they lower prices down. In such a case, there could be more competition, however, the quality of materials produced may still come out as an issue. The focus really should be on student learning efficiency rather than production of countless books worldwide. Among non-critical thinking users of information over the Internet, they may even become victims of quality and erroneous information. To prevent that from happening, it is important to consider the value attached to traditional printed books. As is commonly practiced by reputable publishing houses and publishers, prior to the printing of a book, there is a rigorous process. Publishers are extra-wary on this matter of printing traditional books because of the expenses accompanying book creation, development, quality assurance, production, marketing, sales, and monitoring. For me then, printed books should never run out to, especially in various libraries and even retail physical stores.
Personally, I like the printed book better than the eBook because I feel comfortable as I am used to reading printed books since I was a kid. Like many students who spent most of their time reading printed book, I really love cuddling them and feel their physical weight in my arms. It seems that when I do that and then finish reading the book, knowledge is added again in my brain. It is as if I became more knowledgeable than before. Hence, I keep more and more on reading books. Student will more likely to adjust to the new style of study. For me, what makes the printed book way better than the eBook is that after reading some chapter or a novel, I feel more accomplished. Student will get distracted more easily when reading digital book as compared to the printed book. I will state the reason why it would be difficult for the student to understand the content of the eBook and they will need to go through the chapter or the content of the book. Lastly, I will show you the way our brain works on eBook rather than printed book. EBook is actually is a more convenient form compare to the printed book, but convenience itself would not be complete if we can maximize the use of the book itself because we will more likely to get distracted from the reading given the fact that eBook sales may slow down and then authors and publishers may change strategies (Martin) (Sales of Print Units Slipped in 2013). Although change do happens all the time, printed books are arguably simply my choice just like when, as Louise Gray (Gray), a Telegraph reported, told that authors stood up for traditional books than eBooks because of the formers innateness in handling, touching, collecting, showcasing, bragging about, and so on about them.
Let’s go back where it all begin, Amazon started the trend of digital book of digital book back in 2007. More and more students are more interested in using digital book rather than printed book ever since. In the first two years or less, people try an eBook or just to follow the trend that time. People who actually used it for pleasure reading felt the practicality of eBooks and then they started using the eBook for their textbook. Students more likely bring their laptop or iPad into the classroom to use the eBook itself. Those devices will need battery and if the battery is drained they cannot access the digital book. During their study time, student will have bigger chance to get distracted from the studies because of the devices. By distracted I mean they can gain access through their Facebook, 9gag, YouTube, and a lot of other interesting websites and apps. Hence, learning can be fun, but it becomes more of a distraction as students become tempted to open their gadget once they have to check their social media account, appointment, and other things over the net.
Compared to the printed book, which will give me less distraction and have to bring those devices, like iPad or kindle inside the classroom, I know I will have more chances to get distracted from the class as I fail to discipline or control myself over my craving to use my Smartphone. For me, students are more concentrated to the class lecture when their devices are not with them in the classroom session. However, that would not be case most often as gadgets become basic needs and not necessarily for emergency cases only. Many times, Smartphone, for instance, even serve to fulfill the academic needs of students who have to search information over the Internet. When a teacher facilitates a lesson in class, he or she may even allow students to use their electronic devices so that they could easily caught up with the topics. Some college professors may even require their students to use their Smartphone to access class lectures, activities, and related resources. When that happens, there are instances that students may open other links, not to read an eBook, but to satisfy their desire to chat, post, comment, etc. in their social media accounts and other peoples’ blogs or websites.
When students read books, they are learning and getting new information. Some of that information is processed into their long-term memory, which can be used later in life and will always be easy to recall. That is how learning should be used. We want to make sure that all that they learnt should not end up being forgotten. With eBook, the possibility of processing the information into their short-term memory will increase. People, who read eBook, will more likely to find difficulty to repeat what they have read before. From the research that I have found, there are some authors that wrote about how eBooks cause our brain to absorb less information. Which is actually bad for the students that want to study. After doing some research about eBook, I came across this article from Maia Szalavits, the NY Times Magazine. In the article, she wrote about her experience from reading a book using kindle. She stated that it required longer and more recurrent testing to get into the knowing state using computer reading; nonetheless, people who eventually did it using the computers caught up with those who read on paper. That article is about someone who use eBook as a pleasure reading, imagine if students are studying for their test tomorrow. One of them has a hard time understanding the topic, not only that, they have eBook to study from. He/she have to constantly reread the information from the eBook they have because they find it hard to concentrate.
III. Conclusion
I have provided above the pros and cons of eBooks and printed books. I made a thorough research about the topic using scholarly and related credible resources. I have found out that despite the seeming benefits of electronic books, it has without disadvantages. When I also examined deeply and broadly printed books, it has also pros and not without cons. Nonetheless, as I defended my thesis above, I have the strong opinion backed up by supporting evidences that printed books are my preferences when dealing with learning efficiency. Students may have different learning styles and choices concerning what reading materials would be helpful to their understanding and appreciation as they acquire transferable knowledge from other people (i.e., book authors). I think that what I was accustomed to, that is, using printed books, cannot easily be discarded because of their sentimental value to me. I always wanted to maintain a min-library for all my printed books even when most of them can already be found over the Internet. For me, printed books are like memories that stay inside the soul of a person even reality is no longer present at the moment. Thus, I would be much more indebted to even have my collection of printed books as a reminder that I am a lover of traditional books more than just of electronic books. In a nutshell, I want to have a legacy that I can call my own as I collect my most cherished printed books for posterity.
Works Cited
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Deam, Jenny. E-Books vs. Print: What Parents Need to Know. n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.
Gray, Louise. Authors Stand up for Traditional Books over E-books. 21 July 2013. Web. 31 May 2016.
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Jar, Tony. Traditional Textbooks vs. ETextbooks – Which Is Right for You? n.d. Web. 30 May 2016.
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Martin, Erik. "Ebook Sales Slow, Strategies Shift." Econtent 37.2 (2014): 6-10. Web.
"Sales of Print Units Slipped in 2013." Publishers Weekly 261.1 (2014): 5. Web.
Sargeant, Betty. "What Is An Ebook? What Is A Book App? And Why Should We Care? An Analysis Of Contemporary Digital Picture Books." Children's Literature in Education 46.4 (2015): 454-466. Web.
