The Effects of Electronic Textbook Implementation on Students' Learning in a Chemistry Classroom

Printed textbooks are popular instructional materials in secondary schools but electronic textbooks have been promoted recently. However, little is known about the effects of using e-textbooks on students' learning outcomes and the educational affordance of e-textbooks. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using an e-textbook on Hong Kong students' learning of chemistry in secondary school. An e-textbook chapter entitled Ions, Ionic bonding and Structure was developed. A checklist was constructed to evaluate the quality of the curriculum and the technical features of the electronic chapter. A pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design was used in this study. Two groups of secondary-4 students (N = 27) from two Hong Kong schools participated; the experimental group used the e-textbook chapter while the comparison group used a traditional chemistry textbook published in Hong Kong to have lessons. After the intervention, the students took a posttest to assess their chemistry achievement and responded to a questionnaire to assess their attitudes towards the e-textbook. A performance test was administered to assess students' psychomotor skills at constructing ionic models. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted to collect teacher and student views about using e-textbook in a chemistry classroom. Results showed that the students in the experimental group performed better than their counterparts in the comparison group in terms of chemistry achievement, but no significant difference was found in the psychomotor domain. Using the newly constructed checklist, both teachers evaluated the e-textbook as good for learning. Both teachers and most of the participating students have positive evaluation of the e-textbook in the semi-structured interviews. However, the teacher and students expressed some concerns about using the e-textbook in their regular chemistry lessons, such as classroom management and distractions. The trial e-textbook chapter was perceived as useful with various educational affordances and the students who used e-textbooks in the study were more likely to study. The significance and implications of these findings for chemistry education in Hong Kong are discussed.