Exploring Different Ways to Present Pedagogical Material in Digital Formats

Abstract

With more and more schools today introducing computerized literature and digital consumption tools such as the Apple iPad, there is a need to identify what efforts have gone into making them both usable and pleasant to utilize.While the availability of digital text is abundant, the availability of digital syllabi specifically tailored for digital consumption is still limited.This study will research the differences between reading digitally and reading from physical books.A secondary part of this study is to assess the viability of using modern web technologies to create a usable reading application while providing the reader with a pleasant reading experience.To collect the data for this study, three semi-structured interviews with two different groups of university students have been conducted.These interviews include a simple user testing of a purposely built prototype web application.This prototype is used by thee of the interviewees to explore the various typographical techniques implemented, and evaluate the importance of an assortment of usability-enhancing features.Through these interviews, this study identifies a set of typographical features and techniques that helps create a pleasant reading experience, and identifies a set of features that needs to be present to create a usable digital reading experience. The features requested unanimously across the interviews seem to suggest that there is a set of features that a usable text-reading-centric application should include to be considered useful. These features mostly seem to consist of ways to make up for the features that go missing when translating a text to a digital format, but also ways to assists in utilizing the relative advantages of being digital.