Student Views on Academic Reading and its Future in the Design and Engineering Disciplines

Sheen, KA ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6326-3241 and Luximon, Y (2016) Student Views on Academic Reading and its Future in the Design and Engineering Disciplines. International journal on advances in life sciences, 8 (3 & 4). pp. 257-266. ISSN 1942-2660

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Abstract

Electronic textbooks are becoming a common educational tool, but there is little research on the student desires, which will affect the effectiveness of this tool. This paper aims to add to the current research by outlining students’ reading habits in physical and electronic textbooks and identifying what students feel they need to study using future electronic textbooks. This paper describes a series of focus groups with a total of thirty design and engineering students. Findings illustrated the different ways in which these disciplines approach their academic readings and that future electronic textbooks require some discipline specific components. There were some similarities in views and ideas, such as being able to insert their own images into the textbooks and the desire for less text and more interactive components to facilitate their learning. Identifying design criteria based on discipline needs and including student input based on their task needs will assist in designing future electronic textbooks that will meet academic reading requirements.