Learning on tablets is more effective

The argument

A study conducted by the Department of Psychology at James Madison University, states that “self-reports of multi-tasking were significantly higher for [students using e-textbooks] in the home condition, possibly accounting for the disparities in [higher] reading time.” The design of the study is what gives that finding its weight: it compared performances of students who read a print textbook or e-textbook, in a laboratory or at home. Running the same comparison in two settings separates the effect of the medium from the effect of the environment, since a distraction that appears only at home is a feature of where the reading happens rather than of what it is read on. In both situations, students spent more time finishing the chapter on the e-textbook than on the printed one. Longer reading time is ambiguous on its own, since it could indicate slower comprehension or closer attention, but read alongside the higher self-reported multitasking it points to attention being divided during the reading process rather than to the text being harder to absorb. The test of whether that mattered came afterwards. When the students were quizzed on the chapter material after reading, their performances were slightly different, and the difference ran against the medium that looked more distracting: those who read a print textbook scored lower than those who read an e-textbook by 5%. The comprehension penalty that divided attention would predict did not show up in the results, which is the point on which the two media were being compared. That is what matters for schools choosing between them. Despite the tendency for multitasking, using e-textbooks can potentially lead to better academic performance, and a medium that holds up on the outcome schools actually measure, while carrying the known distractions of a screen, is a viable and serviceable medium of education. Tablets should therefore replace textbooks.

Premises

Counter-arguments

A single study carries the entire argument, and it is a study whose results the argument itself finds awkward. Students using e-textbooks reported more multitasking and took longer to finish the same chapter — findings that point away from the conclusion — and the case rests on a five-percent quiz difference recovered despite them. A gap that size from one experiment, on one chapter, with one quiz, is within the range that sample composition and prior familiarity routinely produce. It is a reason to run more studies, not a basis for replacing textbooks. Even read at its most favourable, the finding does not reach the conclusion. 'More effective' on a comprehension quiz is a narrow measure of an educational technology whose adoption turns on device cost and replacement cycles, home internet access, charging and breakage, teacher training, platform lock-in and licence renewal, and the loss of a resource that works when the battery does not. A method can be marginally better in a laboratory and worse as school policy. The multitasking result is the more robust one and it points the other way. A device that also carries messaging, games and video introduces a competing demand that a printed book does not, and the effect falls hardest on the students with the least structured study environments — which is a distributional objection to replacement, not to tablets as such. Finally, the argument never engages the third position on offer. Nothing in a quiz-score advantage argues for replacement rather than for tablets as an optional alternative alongside print, which would capture the benefit claimed while leaving those without reliable devices or connectivity a route through the same material.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The study's own findings on multitasking and longer reading times point away from the conclusion, and the argument reports them as a difficulty to be overcome rather than as evidence bearing on it. [Rejecting P2] A five-percent difference on one quiz, one chapter and one experiment is well within the range produced by sample composition and prior familiarity; a single unreplicated result of that size supports further study rather than a change of policy. [Rejecting C] Effectiveness on a comprehension quiz does not establish that tablets should replace textbooks, since replacement turns on device cost and replacement cycles, home connectivity, charging and breakage, teacher training and licence renewal — and even a genuine advantage would support the rival position that tablets be offered as an optional alternative, which the argument never addresses.