Adopting an electronic textbook for a post-graduate accounting course: an experiential study

Students are becoming accustomed to using the Internet as an information source that supplements or replaces the normal institutional and classroom handout. However, the use of full electronic books through the Internet or CD instead of a printed full text book is a uniquely different experience, not only for these students but also for academics and their institutions. This study describes the initiative of constructing, publishing, prescribing and using an online text book for use by students in a postgraduate accounting course at an Australian university. The experience provides valuable insights that suggest the need for changes to hardware and software facilities in homes, offices and learning institutions, to students' expectations, and to purchase interfaces and text display, before electronic text books can be readily accepted as an alternative learning tool. It is encouraging from the accounting students' feedback that there was no strong evidence of rejection of the e-book as a learning tool, despite the current technological difficulties associated with its use. This is a positive sign for the hopefully not too distant future use of this learning tool in accounting education.