E-Book Readers Bomb on College Campuses

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Joe Chard, 29, a self-described "tech geek," was itching to use an e-reader in the classroom when he arrived on Darden's campus last fall as a first-year MBA student. When he learned his MBA class section has been selected for the Kindle pilot, he couldn't believe his luck. Says Chard: "I felt like I won the lottery." But he soon realized that the Kindle would not be the ideal tool for the classroom and quickly became frustrated by its slow response time. By the time November rolled around, he had put the device aside in favor of reading class materials in PDF form on his laptop.

"It just didn't have the features or the sort of user friendliness to make it practical, let alone helpful," says Chard, now a second-year student.

"A Device That Doesn't Exist Yet"

Students in the Technology Management MBA program at the University of Washington's Foster School were similarly let down by their experience with the Kindle pilots, says Daniel Turner, associate dean of the school's masters and executive education programs. The school put the textbooks students needed for class on the Kindle but, unlike Darden, chose not to put case studies on the device. The pilot began in January, and students in the program were given the option of using the Kindle for class; 61 of the 77 students, or about 79 percent, decided to participate in the pilot for the first quarter. By the time the Spring quarter came around, only 17 of the original 61 in the pilot chose to continue to use it. Like the Darden students, Foster students had similar complaints about navigation and note-taking, as well as frustrations about the way graphics, images, and formulas were rendered on the device.

"There were some high hopes. It's easy to say they were not fully met," he says. "I think what students are calling for is a device that doesn't exist just yet."

For now at least, the future of e-readers on college campuses looks cloudy. The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind filed a lawsuit last year against Arizona State University for using the Kindle to distribute electronic textbooks to students, stating the device could not be used by blind students. The lawsuit has since been settled, but Arizona State and several of the other universities in the pilot, including Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Oregon's Reed College, and Pace University in New York, have agreed not to use the Kindle or any other e-reader in classes unless the device is fully accessible to the blind or visually impaired. Some universities, such as Wayne State University in Detroit, have passed resolutions stating that the school will not do any business with Amazon unless or until the Kindle is created in a manner that allows for an alternative format for the blind and visually impaired. Other schools, such as Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have passed similar resolutions.

The iPad Advantage

Many universities see the Apple (AAPL) iPad as the next frontier for e-reading devices in the classroom. "The iPads are coming," says Darden's Koenig, who says he expects to see many students toting their iPads to class next fall. Some business schools are already starting to use the iPad in the classroom. IMD business school in Switzerland announced this week that it has already started using the iPad in the classroom. The school piloted the iPad in an executive education program with Allianz Global Investors at the beginning of May, and feedback from the faculty, staff and students was "overwhelmingly postive," says IMD Professor Bettina Buchel. "I think this device will revolutionize executive education."

Other schools will likely follow suit, especially as the iPad becomes more prevalent on campus next year after more students pick them up over the summer, says Gray, of the National Center for Technology Innovation.

"I would hate to be the person at Kindle watching the explosion of the iPad," Gray says. "I think the Kindle is going to have to pedal pretty quickly to find itself competitive with the iPad. It's a game changer."

Damast is a reporter for Businessweek.com.

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