Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to investigate the emotions of students toward using digital textbook and to examine the factors affecting the emotions. Also, this study examined the relationship among the factors of individual characteristics and computer usage, student’s emotions, and the perceived learning effects. For this study, 2,950 1st grade middle school students participated in a survey which measured individual characteristics, computer usage behavior, emotions toward using digital textbooks, and perceived learning effects of digital textbooks. The results showed that positive emotions toward using digital textbooks such as enjoyment and expectation were higher than negative emotions such as anxiety, annoyance, and boredom. The factors that affect student's positive emotions were intrinsic motivation, self-regulated learning, and student's use of computers for learning and entertainment. Digital textbook efficacy was the most influential factor that affect student's negative emotions, and computer addiction was also related to the negative emotions. Regarding the perceived learning effects, intrinsic motivation, self-regulated learning were related to more positive perceptions of learning effects. Although, the strongest predictor of positive perceptions of learning effects was student's positive emotions toward using digital textbooks. The results of this study implied that the individual characteristics of the students and the characteristics related to the computer usage affect student’s emotions and consequently student's perception of the learning effects could be changed through the emotions. In addition, it was suggested to further explore various factors that affect student’s emotion of using digital textbooks such as teacher and instructional characteristics.

Keywords:

Digital textbooks, Student’s emotion, Perceived learning effect, Individual characteristics, Computer usage.