Design and Development of Multimedia E-Textbooks for School Education in Nepal

Abstract

The digital form of textbooks as learning resources for school pupils has been analyzed and adopted in various developed countries. But Nepal has a low status of development in education and information and communications technology (ICT) domain compared to developed nations, which poses unique challenges to apply state of the art technology while creating e-textbooks as learning resources for school pupils. Literature has analyzed the use and efficiency of e-textbooks in the context of school education. Research studies have also reviewed multiple factors related to acceptance of the e-textbooks among school teachers and pupils. Even though the interface and functionality of e-textbooks have been discussed widely, well-established design layouts to develop multimedia e-textbooks are not yet available. This thesis work is early-stage design research to develop a prototype e-textbook system for school education in Nepal. The prototype e-textbook system is a web application to create and render e-textbooks. The rendered e-textbooks, which comprise a digital form of paper textbooks and educational multimedia, can be read via web browsers. While developing the prototype e-textbook system, a design framework on how to sequence, integrate, and display multimedia has been proposed. This framework can provide a way to deal with design issues of e-textbooks, such as making e-textbooks as familiar as paper textbooks and making their interface as self-descriptive as possible.