The Effects of the E-Book System with the Reading Guidance and the Annotation Map on the Reading Performance of College Students

Novice learners demonstrate marked difficulty in using reading-study systems to read academic textbooks. One notable problem is that the process and constructed knowledge is complex. Novice learners are required to exert considerable effort in applying the process and in remembering the knowledge, resulting in lower motivation and fewer cognitive resources for reading. This study develops an e-book reading system with an integrated reading guidance module and an annotation map, and conducts an experiment for examining the effect of this system on reading, reviewing, navigational performance, and reader behavior. The results show that the annotation map significantly improves reviewing and navigational performance, but not reading performance. Log analysis identifies two problems related to reading guidance: time allocation and learner control. We discuss these results and propose recommendations for future works.