The effects of high/low interactive electronic storybooks on elementary school students’ reading motivation, story comprehension and chromatics concepts

• Emphasis on interactive features in E-books can facilitate student learning.
• Interactive storybooks improve motivation, comprehension, and chromatic concepts.
• Interactive features should be congruent with story and based on instructional design principles.
• Effective functions of interactive books include guidance, prompting, and feedback.
• Teachers could use the identified high interactive functions in reading activities.

Providing e-books does not automatically increase readers’ comprehension. E-books must be designed to facilitate students’ learning effects. We designed two versions (high/low interactive) of the electronic picture book titled “Color Monster’s Adventure,” which has a fantasy storyline and appealing art design, and embedded basic concepts of chromatology and color psychology. The low interactive e-book version contains only simple interactive buttons with narration, and the high interactive e-book version features the following three advanced functions: guidance, prompt and feedback. We conducted an experiment in a northern Taiwan elementary school with a total of 40 fourth-grade students. The results showed that the students in the high interaction group performed significantly better in reading motivation, story comprehension and chromatics concepts than their low interaction counterparts. We concluded by proposing a high interactive e-book model and providing suggestions regarding integrating proper scaffolding into designing the e-book content to improve students’ reading performance.

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