A transition from traditional to electronic textbooks is happening, including single-authored and co-authored electronic textbooks. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to textbook selection, low and high domain knowledge students are best served by textbooks exhibiting differing levels of cohesion that cater to their domain knowledge level. However, textbook text easability metrics, when optimized in the traditional versions, do not necessarily survive the digitization process unscathed due to the unique design considerations required by electronic textbooks, and this can be a disservice to students’ learning. The text easability of three undergraduate chemistry electronic textbooks and one traditional textbook, from four separate publishers, was measured using Coh-Metrix software (narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, and referential and deep cohesions). One of the electronic textbooks, written by numerous co-authors, was further analyzed for the potential influence of different author “voices” on text easability. Kruskal-Wallis analysis and multiple pairwise comparisons using the Steel-Dwass-Critchlow-Fligner procedure revealed significant differences in all five text easability markers. One electronic textbook (multiple co-authors) differed only in its narrativity compared with the traditional comparator, whereas the other electronic textbooks with fewer authors shared only one of the same easability markers with the traditional comparator. The probable averaging of multiple “voices” in co-authored electronic textbooks could stymie the dominance of any single individual “voice” and could reduce the impact on text easability metrics of the digitization process incurred during the conversion to or construction of electronic chemistry textbooks.

Analysis of text easability markers in undergraduate electronic and traditional chemistry textbooks

2019 Fall National Meeting

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