User interface design of digital textbooks: how screens affect learning.

摘要

One of the recent major changes in educational technology has been learning using digital books, or ebooks. Some of their benefits include portability, affordability, interactivity, and an enhanced capability for showing multimedia elements that may support learning, as Elena Aurel Railean explains in her book. The author discusses the transition from using printed books to ebooks in education, and how the design of user interfaces (UI) for displaying those ebooks affects learning. The book has five chapters: "Impacts of Digital Revolution on Learning," "A Paradigm Shifths [sic] and User Interface Design Models," "Digital Screens and Issues of Multiliteracies' Learning," "Teacher-Centered Versus Learner-Centered Design of Screen," and "Knowledge Ecology and Sustainable Development." The chapters describe diverse topics on educational technology, including reflections and research reviews on the application of interactive UIs and ebooks for learning. The book also addresses the challenges of using ebooks in education, and how some educational theories support their use for both learning and teaching. This book poses interesting research questions that deserve further investigation: How should digital textbooks (in the form of ebooks) and their UIs be designed in a multidisciplinary and holistic way for supporting learning? How does the use of digitized books and ebooks affect learning? The latter is the author's central question in this book.