The More they Tried it the Less they Liked it: Norwegian and Romanian Student’s Response to Electronic Course Material

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper we will present and compare survey findings from Romania and Norway taken from the "Multinational study on students' preferences regarding print versus electronic resources for course readings". This study was conducted in April 2015 and surveyed undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students of various subjects at different universities. The aim was to investigate students' format preferences when engaging with academic readings and what factors impact their preferences and behaviors. The comparative study will show whether students' reading format preferences vary or remain consistent across multi-national student populations. We also make comparisons with results from an earlier study of Romanian and Norwegian students' attitudes towards using academic libraries. In particular, we look at the reasons given for preferring course readings in either electronic or print format, and we discuss what this could mean for collection development policies.

Information Literacy and Environmental Sustainability Correlation in Using and Communicating Information

“…However, when looking at the responses from students in Brasov to the Multinational survey on students' preferences of print vs electronic study literature presented at ECIL2015 by Landøy, Repanovici and Gastinger, there is a much clearer preference for print and not so much for electronic material among these students, who had not been presented with information literacy and sustainable searching. In the multi-national survey the preference were 66 percent for print and 22 percent for "both" [9]. The results are not absolutely comparable, since the multi-national study asked specifically for study literature.…”

How an academic library worked during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This is what has happened with electronic journals. Earlier, we have found indications that part of the preference for paper comes from the familiarity with the tools that can be used on paper (writing notes, underlining, and marking the text) (Gastinger, Landøy, Repanovici, 2015;Landøy, Faerevaag, 2019) On the other hand, a survey conducted in June 2020 shows that 30 % of 1700 students state that they have learnt best by reading both printed and electronic materials, while 45 % said they would like 75 % of the reading material in paper format. This is astonishingly similar to the numbers from three years ago, even though the amount of digital books have multiplied during the last years (Svendsen 2020).…”

“…When it comes to electronic books, however, the acceptance and usage is lower, especially among students, in line with findings from multi-national surveys. (Gastinger, Landøy, Repanovici, 2015;Landøy, Faerevaag, 2019;Mizrachi et al, 2018) The Library had already implemented user oriented web pages, containing different kinds of instructions in written and video format. The web-pages were both general and subject specific, and covered situations from "how to use the library catalogue" to "how to write your PhD".…”

Undesirable Difficulties: Investigating Barriers to Students’ Learning with Ebooks in a Semester-length Course

“…41 When learning and comprehension are the goal, students appear to perform better with print books. 42 Past research has demonstrated that, under some conditions, students engage with ebooks in a shallow manner, 43 in part because distractions are abundant when reading on a web-enabled device, and students report that they tend to multitask while reading ebooks. 44 Students tend to skim or scan rather than read for understanding.…”