Photo: Dr. Ann Harvey (left) and Barbara Nelson (right)
The question is often asked, “Is there a difference between children reading books in paper or electronic format?” The Imagination Library of Grant County is beginning to answer that question with their “To ‘e’ or not to ‘e’?”study.
With financial support from the Frederick H. Leonhardt Foundation in Albuquerque, The Imagination Library engaged the services of Dr. Ann Harvey, Professor of Reading at Western New Mexico University to help suggest an answer to that question. Dr. Harvey has been invited to present her research at the prestigious Oxford Education Research Symposium on March 25 and 26 at Oxford University in England. Dr. Harvey is eager to present her findings.
The study was conducted with 45 randomly selected Grant County kindergarten and preschool students. Each child was given the same three books in both printed and eBook form. Half of the students first had the print form read to them, and the other half read the eBook form. Immediately after completing the task, a testing instrument with was administered individually. The students were asked to retell the story and then respond to questions about the problem in the story, the setting, the characters, and vocabulary found in the story. The students were also asked to blend sounds to make the word such as “hat”, “cat” and “sat” which appeared in the text.
After three weeks, the students were given the same books to reread in the alternate form. The same questions were administered during the second reading.
After a statistical analysis, Dr. Harvey reports, “There was no statistically significant relationship between the scores produced by the students reading paper books and the scores produced by the students reading electronic books.” She further reports that after comparing her results to other similar studies that “the choice of eBooks or paper books is not an ‘either/or’ proposition. A combination of paper books and electronic books seems to offer the best solution. Printed books do not break, and they work is not available. EBooks provide stimulated learning experience which instantly broadens the background knowledge of students.”
Further, she noted that while speech feedback features of eBooks are favorable for developing the rhyming aspect of phonological awareness, adult guided print book reading is favorable for the development of comprehension related outcomes such as story understanding and recall.
According to Barbara Nelson, Imagination Library President, “The next step is to begin a three year longitudinal study that will examine the sustainable effects on our graduates, following them from kindergarten through second grade.” She hopes to begin that follow-up study in the fall of 2014. The Dollywood Foundation has asked for a copy of the current study as they decide the future options for the international Imagination Library program.
The Imagination Library is now sending a free book each month to over 1,350 Grant County preschool children and has mailed over 30,000 books in the past three years. For further information on the study or Dr. Harvey’s trip, please contact The Imagination Library of Grant County at 575.534.9156 or visit them online at www.ImaginationLibraryGC.org.