A framework for mapping e-textbooks as a socio-technical regime

Abstract

In recent years academic and educational publishers have started to convert printed textbooks and learning materials into digital formats. However, this current digitization “wave” leaves the wider socio-technical regime with its various components that accompanies the use of these resources untouched and misses an examination of current and evolving educational practices and their mediation with digital texts. We take a wider, comprehensive perspective on the digitization of textbooks by attempting to map current e-textbook research and identify its wider components as a new socio-technical regime. The analysis has shown that e-textbook related studies rarely have revealed the wider economical components and policies that regulate the e-textbook usage in certain cases. As a conclusion we propose to use the “translated” components of e-textbook sociotechnical regime as a reference framework for comparing alternative approaches taken to introduce e-textbook initiatives in different countries.