Students' Attitudes Towards Textbook Types: Are Students Really Ready for E-Textbooks?

Textbook selection is just one of the many decisions a professor has to make when teaching a class. These selection decisions are sometimes made by the individual professor while other times it is made by committee or department. In many cases, students are not taken into consideration when making these decisions. However considering many professors complain that students do not buy or use the required textbook (Kingkade 2014, Paxhia 2011, Robinson 2011), maybe it is time to think about student’s attitudes and preferences before making textbook adoption decisions. Unfortunately there are only a few studies (e.g. Daniel and Woody 2013) that have examined students’ perceptions towards the different types of textbooks currently on the market. Because of this, the goal of this exploratory study is to examine the attitudes and opinions of students towards four possible textbook options (hardback, paperback, e-textbook, and looseleaf) in order to better assist in textbook adoption decisions.