Andrew Nimick Point Concept twitter.com/andrewnim

Working on assumptions has always been a mistake. Due the advent of the Kindle (with its many copy cats) and smart phones like the iPhone, many pundits are busy declaring the death of the printed book.

One in which the pundits are very loud on this issue is in education. They insist that today's students want digital and that that it is the way to reach them.

I have to admit that I tended to think this was probably true. For me, course books work in an ebook format; because you can move around within them and with the right tools make notations and link to other sources. Add video into the mix and it's suddenly a multimedia book. The distinctions between book, web and TV become smaller all the time.

However, accoding to a poll here: http://www.studentpirgs.org/textbooks-reports/a-cover-to-cover-solution

Seventy-five per cent of students when asked said they preferred the paper version of a course book. There may be many reasons for this result. The main one though is probably access to suitable devices on which to view and interact with the ebooks. Bear in mind student budgets. But it could also be that there is a need for multiple resources to be open at any one time; a pad for notes and one or two books to reference and scribble in.

It could also be that course material and ways of teaching students how to work have not caught up.

So at present, the user experience may not be all it is made out to be. Instead of assuming what students want we should be discovering how they work and whether what industry is pushing is actually what they need right now.

It may be that the swing from print to digital will take a few years as younger students readily acquire ways of working based around digital. In the meantime though lets listen to the students a little more closely and not the technology. The same advice holds true in the commercial world (unless you are Apple it seems).

The survey was conducted by an organisation which supports affordable resources, whether print or digital.