For the past two years, I have been conducting a project-based class on “creating e-books.” As a way to keep a record, I would like to organize the tools used and the reactions and costs from the perspective of the class and the students.

First, it is important to note that this class is a hybrid of lecture-based and project-based learning, and it is a general education course. Please understand that these are my personal observations, as the situation would differ in specialized courses in fields like media or arts, or depending on the instructional design.

Adobe InDesign is a highly specialized tool, and students need to get used to various toolboxes. It is a bit difficult for students who have never touched Adobe tools (other than Reader). I think Sigil is good because it can be used like an HTML editor, but since basic knowledge of HTML and CSS syntax is required, it is necessary to consider how to provide support in that regard. Regarding money, InDesign obviously costs money. If you want students to have it, you would need financial support from the university. I installed it on the center’s computers, and students worked there. Since Sigil is free, I had students install it on their own computers. As for student reactions, they struggled quite a bit with InDesign. This is because there was a problem where the layout looked as expected in InDesign, but the layout would break on the iPad. Adjusting this took a lot of time. The group that used Sigil felt neither particularly good nor bad. Since they were science students, I think they were accustomed to using editors.

In the 2012 academic year, I used iBooks Author. Since the mandatory computers for students at our university run Windows, we purchased two Mac minis for the center and installed iBooks Author on each. If your university has a computer room with Macs, this initial investment would not be necessary. As for the time cost, it can be used like Keynote, so it seems good at first glance, but it is a tool with quirks. It is a bit troublesome because there are quirks that are hard to understand, such as the understanding of chapters and sections, and the inability to rearrange pages (or maybe you could within a section?). It is not intuitive. The cost is free, so that is fine. As for student reactions, because it is in the iBooks format, it only works on iBooks for iPad, page turning becomes a slide, and images do not display when held vertically, showing only text—there is a strange culture here as well. It would be good if they could accept that “this is just how it is,” but there are also reactions that it is different from what they expected.

I am thinking of trying Pages next. I tried it myself, and it is much more intuitive than iBooks Author. Since many students are Windows users and are accustomed to Word, I don’t think they will have much trouble understanding how to use it. It is also easy to insert images and videos. The fact that it can export to epub is a plus.

Regarding the class format, the flow of planning, content creation, book creation, and presentation was good. Some students were more motivated to create a new form of content called an “e-book” than to create a regular web page. I don’t know what will happen in the future, though.

The students were also proactive and worked hard. I want them to learn how to create content and e-books, but I felt that it also led to the development of collaboration skills, information gathering skills, planning skills, and presentation skills, and was effective in fostering these abilities. It is fine to do it alone with a theme of your choice, but there is a lot to learn by working in groups, dividing tasks, revising each other’s plans and content, and cooperating with one another.

I would like to continue planning classes like this in the future.