Engaging Online Learners Through Cloud-Based Collaborative E-Books

Introduction

Although e-books are used in face-to-face learning environments, they are among the basic course materials used in distance education. Thanks to their advantages over printed books, they are increasingly preferred by learners, trainers, and institutions (Johnson, Levine, Smith & Stone, 2010). However, the need for communication or interaction regarding the media and resources used becomes even more important due to the importance of interaction in distance education where learner and teacher are far from each other. As such, the passive one-sided presentation of e-books in a way that allows only learner-content interaction renders the environment dysfunctional in terms of interaction. In addition, it is very difficult for learners, who have more say over the content with Web 2.0, to interact over a standard PDF.

The Connectivity approach, which adds new dimensions to the learning process and the social constructivist approach that forms the basis of this approach, define learning as a process in which learners create meaning through active participation (Vygotsky, 1979; Starr-Glass, 2013). Considered from this point of view, the main task of educational institutions and trainers is to provide environments where learners can interact with the content, the teacher and other learners (Vrasidas, 2000). Teaching is effective only when learners interact with each other and discussions or dialogues occur with learning support (Zhu, 1998).

Simply presenting the content to the learners or providing the media and technologies for interaction is not sufficient. In this sense, the connectivist approach presents connectedness as a prerequisite as well but does not guarantee a high quality of learning (Starr-Glass, 2013). In this respect, approaches should be developed to enable learners to transform from a passive receiver position to active learners who can structure their knowledge (Pilkington & Sanders, 2014). It is observed that especially adult learners prefer active learning rather than passive learning, and opt for environments where ideas can be shared, and a dialogue-centered structure where problems are solved together (Robb, 2013).

With digital publishing and Web 2.0, e-books have become available not only in PDF format, but also in different formats and features. E-books have both software that allows content interaction and platforms that enable social interaction. The one-way process, where printed books can be downloaded onto the hardware used by learners with e-book formats, makes it possible to use the potential offered by the connectivity approach with Web 2.0 and e-text technologies (Abaci et al., 2015, 2017; Lim & Foon Hew, 2014). Cloud-based technologies, in particular, offer learning opportunities to be discovered for instructors and education organizations.

Since they enable social interaction, discussion forums are an important option for distance learning environments (Beckett et al., 2010; Nandi et al., 2012). However, the hierarchical structure of discussion forums separates learners from context and turns them into a tool through which more general ideas can be reflected. In order for the learner-content interaction to take place, users must first define the content (context) they want to talk about, which makes discussing a certain content difficult. Anchored discussion platforms, similar to discussion forums, allow for asynchronous participation, while providing the opportunity to discuss directly on the resource such as a web page or PDF file. Presenting cloud-based e-books (CBEB) by using them for collaborative learning creates an anchored discussion environment.