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Top1. Introduction
Over the past several years, a number of higher education institutions have been considering the introduction of e-Readers into their environment (Gerlich, 2011). Some have already instituted e-Reader policies and others are running e-Reader pilot programmes. Some universities have looked at providing each student with an e-Reader, while others are considering the use of e-Readers within their library (Shelburne, 2009). Universities are being encouraged to help students improve their learning capabilities both inside and outside the classroom.
In today’s fast paced world, students need educational material instantly and e-Readers have the ability to improve educational attainment in this way. E-Books can be updated instantly and universally, and there is no need to wait for the publishing process of the traditional text book. Textbook authors and publishers can update certain sections of e-Textbooks without the need for a whole new print run. E-Readers could deliver a regularly updated, interactive education to students (Freedman, 2009).
The University of Cape Town (UCT) is Africa’s top university, ranked in the top 200 worldwide rankings, and has about 25 000 registered students, including more than 4 000 international students from 104 countries. Technology-supported education is a strong imperative at UCT and this research aimed to understand student perspectives towards the use of e-Readers and tablet computers within the University of Cape Town.
The main questions of this research were:
• Would using an e-Reader improve student studies, and enhance productivity?
• Would students find it easy to use an e-Reader?
• What features do students consider most important in an e-Reader?
• Are students planning on buying an e-Reader in the near future?
• How important are certain facilitating conditions regarding e-Reader adoption within the UCT environment?
Since e-Readers and tablet computers are an emerging information technology, relatively little academic research has been published in this area, especially from higher education institutions in emerging economies. This research aims to contribute to the relatively new field of research concerned with the adoption of e-Readers for academic purposes. It aims to provide academics and higher education institutions with a better understanding of how students feel about the adoption of e-Readers. Understanding the benefits and limitations of e-Readers, should also enable stakeholders to make better decisions with regards to the potential adoption or promotion of e-Readers.
Top2. E-Reader And Tablet Computer Technologies
The digital publishing revolution is changing the way we read, write, store and gather information. Digital publishing can be traced back to the formation of Project Gutenberg in 1971 by Michael Hart. He electronically published the Declaration of Independence, which became the first digitized publication. This led to the first free, online, public-domain library (Gerlich, 2011). The catalogue of Project Gutenberg grew from 1 000 e-Books in August 1997, to 11 000 in December 2003, covering several formats, (ASCII, HTML and PDF), which could easily be copied, searched, indexed, compared and manipulated. Currently (August 2013), the Project Gutenberg collection holds more than 42 000 free e-Book titles (http://www.gutenberg.org).
In 1995, Jeff Bezos decided to sell traditional books online through Amazon.com. This gave users multiple search options and the ability to view book extracts, pay by credit cards and get books delivered within a week (Lebert, 2009, p.22). When digital publishing began to attract substantial publicity in 1997, existing book distributers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, along with others, entered the e-Book market. Within a few years more online bookstores emerged, with some selling only e-Books (Chrystal, 2010).