South Korean Digital Textbook Project

Abstract

South Korea has adopted the widespread use of digital textbooks. Part school reform and part an effort to prepare today's children for tomorrow's challenging world, the way in which this effort was implemented and the lessons learned are valuable. This article highlights the history of the digital textbook project and compares printed textbooks and digital textbooks in terms of pedagogy and their effects on student learning. The article reviews research that found that digital textbooks have a positive effect on students’ meta-cognition, self-regulated learning, self-efficacy, information exploration, problem-solving, intrinsic motivation, and self-reflection. In addition, our research found that the impact of digital textbooks varied according to whether students were in urban or rural schools and was also dependent on their achievement level. With this basis, the article discusses the opportunities and challenges of the digital textbook, and suggests some models of implementation. It is hoped that the exploration of South Korean educators’ approaches to educational reform with innovative digital textbooks will stimulate further work on integrating technology in education.

KEYWORDS:

• digital textbook
• technology integration
• multimedia
• information and communication technology
• 21st century classroom