The Impact of e-Textbooks on Student Performance and the Used Textbook Market

Abstract

The cost of college textbooks has increased at a rate greater than inflation for many years. In an attempt to save money, students have operated an informal market in used textbooks for decades. Realizing that US textbooks are sold in other countries at lower prices because of the price discrimination practices of publishers, some foreign students have started informal textbook businesses by importing textbooks from their home country and selling them to their classmates. Politicians and administrators discuss e-textbooks as way to reduce cost. There have been a number of pilot studies in recent years; however, these studies have overwhelmingly focused only on user perceptions and not on learning outcomes. This study reviews the extant literature on e-textbooks and reports the findings of an experiment where two operations management courses were taught during the same semester, on the same days, by the same instructor with one class using a traditional paper textbook and the other using the e-textbook version. The future of e-textbooks and the potential impact on the used textbook market are also discussed.