Printed Textbooks Versus Electronic Textbooks: A Study on the Preference of Students of Gulf University in Kingdom of Bahrain

Abstract

Technology has become an indispensable phenomenon in the contemporary era which has its impact in every walk of life and education is not an exception to this. The tech-savvy students of today have easily adopted the electronic textbooks as a replacement of printed textbooks owing to its ease of use, cost effectiveness and accessibility. Varied views on the students’ preference of the specified format of textbooks have laid the platform for more formal and fo-cused research pursuits these days globally. Therefore, a research to differenti-ate the advantages and disadvantages of both the formats and the reasons that are primary to opt for the one over the other at a regional level is very much the need of the hour. The study aimed to find out the interest and preference that prevailed in the minds of students of Gulf University, Kingdom of Bah-rain, with respect to the adopting of electronic textbooks over the printed text-books as this kind of study has been carried out much limited in this region. A list of questions was made in order to find out the pros and cons of the printed textbooks and electronic textbooks so that the valid reasons for the preference could be identified. The study adopted a quantitative research design and the questionnaire as a research tool to collect the data. The result affirms that most of the students are familiar with both the formats of textbooks and are more comfortable using electronic textbooks and have expressed their willingness to a complete shift from printed textbooks to electronic textbooks. Nevertheless, the findings make it clear that the students opt for electronic textbooks depend-ing upon the nature of the subject or academic discipline.