=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2755/paper9
|storemode=property
|title=Interactive Textbooks in School Informatics: A Case Study in Estonia
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2755/paper9.pdf
|volume=Vol-2755
|authors=Maia Lust,Priit Tammets,Jaak Laanpere,Mart Laanpere
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/issep/LustTLL20
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==Interactive Textbooks in School Informatics: A Case Study in Estonia==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2755/paper9.pdf
Interactive Textbooks in School Informatics: A Case
Study in Estonia
Maia Lust1, Priit Tammets1, Jaak Laanpere2, Mart Laanpere1
1 Tallinn University, School of Digital Technologies, Narva maantee 25, 10120 Tallinn, Estonia
maia.lust@tlu.ee, tammets@tlu.ee, mart.laanpere@tlu.ee
2 NetGroup, Tammsaare tee 92, 12913 Tallinn, Estonia
jaak.laanpere@netgroup.com
Abstract. A move from printed to digital textbooks is often implemented on three
different levels, while the highest level is interactive textbook that is able to check
the learners' responses to learning tasks (incl. program code) and give personal-
ised, automated feedback. Such interactive textbooks were developed in Estonia
to support implementation of radically reformed national curriculum in informat-
ics. This paper summarises a case study focusing on design, development and
piloting of two online textbooks
Keywords: E-textbooks, Interactive learning resources, School informatics.
1 Introduction
Informatics is probably the first candidate among all school subjects when it comes to
switching from printed to digital textbooks, as the students have to study this subject
with the help of computers anyway. Although there exist a multitude of traditional (text-
based) and innovative (interactive, gamified, project-based) online learning resources
for teaching coding, the official informatics textbooks are still printed in many coun-
tries. The situation is different in Estonia, where there have been technically no printed
textbooks available in informatics since 1996. It has to do with the tiny size of the
country and, consequently, its textbook market, but also with the marginal status of
informatics as a subject in Estonian schools. Estonian informatics teachers are used to
rely on self-created learning materials and open educational resources they have found
online. The situation has been changing in recent years, as a result of development of
new curriculum for informatics. The ministry of Education and Research supported the
development of online interactive textbooks for informatics that have been introduced
in schools. The paper analyses the design, use and reception of these digital textbooks
and proposes the further developments.
This study is guided by the following research questions:
- What are the pedagogical and technological design requirements for interactive
textbooks in school informatics?
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons
License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
2
- How can we support creativity, collaboration and self-regulation of learners in in-
formatics courses through changing the design of interactive textbooks?
- What are the shortcomings of piloted e-textbooks according to the students and
teachers and how these can be addressed by design improvements?
2 Theoretical framework: key concepts and approaches
Informatics textbooks should provide students with theoretical basis as well as with
more subject specific practical skills, such as general problem-solving skills, algorithm
design, programming, robotics, creation of various multimedia content etc. In order to
provide computer science students with subject specific e-textbooks numerous attempts
was done.
2.1 Evolution of e-textbooks: historical retrospective
E-textbook or digital textbook is a new format for educational resources which emerged
in the last quarter of the XX century, but the roots of this idea go further back in time.
Inspired by Pressey's concept of teaching machines, Skinner (1954) proposed the idea
of programmed instruction that led to designing adaptive, non-linear textbooks that
were implemented both in printed and mechanical formats. Skinner (ibid.) criticized
traditional, uniform and linear instruction in schools and suggested a new kind of text-
books that provided some branching options based on students' interaction with the
content.
First mass-produced electronic textbooks appeared in US schools in the beginning
of 1990s and were merely digital versions of printed textbooks (Schwarz et al, 1996).
However, some researchers explored also the interactivity as a way to radically enhance
the e-textbooks. For example, Fowler & Fowler (1993) used hypertext with the purpose
to integrate concepts introduced in the classroom and text (the course lecture material,
course syllabus), with the instructional design (a large set of designs and example pro-
grams) and programming environment (laboratory exercises, programming assign-
ments). A year later Benfordet et al (1994) showed another example of adding interac-
tivity to the e-textbooks by providing not only online access to the text of lectures and
programming problems but also adding a tool to evaluate the solutions delivered by
students and provide the student with informative, personalised feedback. An alterna-
tive concept of digital learning resources was introduced in 1994 by Wayne Hodgins
(Hodgins, 2002), who suggested that the monolithic, linear textbooks should be re-
placed by small digital 'learning objects' that can be combined and re-used by learners
and teachers according to their learning needs.
Since the turn of millennium, the speed of digital transformation of education has
increased, resulting with new ideas how to improve digital textbooks. Jang (2014) de-
scribed digital textbooks that include hypertext, multimedia and interactive functions
that enable learners to learn according to their aptitudes, abilities, and levels. Dwyer &
Davidson (2014) suggested that e-textbooks should include (on top of video and hyper-
links) also built-in dictionaries and pronunciation guides, bookmarking, highlighting
3
and underlining capabilities, full-text searching, and the linking of the multimedia ob-
jects. Gu et al (2015) conceptualised e-textbook as a digital learning platform that com-
bines features of e-learning and e-publishing technologies, and serves as dynamic and
interactive reading material, and as an interface for learning activities among learners
and the learning communities. During the first decade of 21st century, many academic
publishers introduced the digital learning resources in a form of standardised SCORM
content packages that can be imported to a Learning Management System (LMS, e.g.
Moodle or Blackboard) and used interactively instead of traditional textbooks.
Lokar (2015) found that even today, publishers are trying to stress similarities of
traditional and digital textbooks: "An eTextbook is the complete contents of a printed
textbook, delivered in electronic form over the Internet. An eTextbook has the same
content as a printed textbook, the same chapter divisions, and the same page number-
ing”. On the other hand, the e-textbook researchers and innovators are more interested
in moving away from the traditional concept. Pesek et al (2014) describe three levels
of e-textbook evolution:
1) digitalized textbooks: The content is the same as in the print version. Their only
elements are text and pictures. The only added value is the option to add comments and
notes more easily;
2) rich textbooks incorporate some form of interactivity. They add video and sound
elements, some forms of interactive questions are present;
3) interactive textbooks have all the elements of digitalized and rich textbooks but
also the content adapted to human to computer interaction, interactive elements (dy-
namic interactive constructions), interactive progress check (instant feedback), the pos-
sibility to save answers, success rate analysis.
This brief historical overview shows that there have been at least three alternative
scenarios of development of digital learning resources:
1. enhancing the original concept of textbooks by using new digital publishing formats
(PDF, ePub, HTML5) and adding some new features enabled by new digital tech-
nologies, such as non-linearity (hypertext), multimedia, interactive exercises with
automated feedback
2. re-defining e-textbooks as standardised, interactive (yet mostly linear) content pack-
ages that can be integrated into various institutional e-learning platforms
3. replacing the idea of uniform, pre-designed textbooks with repositories of reusable,
atomic learning objects that can be combined into a meaningful whole by learner or
teacher him/herself, sometimes with the help of an intelligent recommender system.
In this paper, we follow mostly the first scenario (borrowing some ideas from the sec-
ond and third scenario), while aiming at the third level of e-textbook evolution as de-
fined by Pesek et al (see above) - interactive textbooks.
What would be the next stage in the evolution of e-textbooks? Väljataga et al (2015)
claim that the bulk of digital learning material and e-textbook solutions currently avail-
able are still not supporting the more ambitious pedagogical innovation aspiring more
learner-centered, self-directed, creative and collaborative learning. They propose (ibid.)
4
a taxonomy of distributed co-authorship levels that can be used for comparing the dig-
ital textbooks in future. The ambition of interactive textbooks for school informatics in
Estonia has been clearly set to higher levels in CoA taxonomy.
2.2 Defining the e-textbook
The easiest way would be to define e-textbook as e-book that has been designed for
learning purposes in accordance with curriculum standards. However, as we demon-
strated in the historical overview above, an e-textbook does not have to be (and often
is not) an e-book. Variety of e-textbook definitions can be found in literature, most of
these focus on the digital format of educational content that includes not only text, but
also hypertext and bookmarks (Fowler and Fowler, 1993), multimedia (Knight, 2015;
Jang, 2014; Dwyer & Davidson 2014), feedback and assessment (Benfordet et al 1994),
animations and videos (Regueira and Rodriguez, 2015). Railean (2015) gives a com-
prehensive definition of digital textbook: 'Digital textbook is a mix of workbook, refer-
ence book, exercise book, case book and manual of instruction based on static hypertext
or multimodal text, which meet curriculum standards (pedagogic resources) or/and is
an alternative learning tool, located in a digital library accessed through a personal
computer or mobile digital device connected to Internet and directed from an educa-
tional platform'.
Lokar (2015) suggests six key features of a good e-textbook:
– Accessible: an e-textbook should be available online and there should be the pos-
sibility of transferring it to other locations.
– Adaptable: an e-textbook should be adaptable to the needs of individual teachers,
learners and groups of learners.
– Cost effective: an e-textbook should increase the efficiency and productivity by
cutting the time and money spent on the whole lifecycle of a textbook, including future
revisions, adaptations….
– Durable: an e-textbook should be adaptable to the changes in technology without
costly redesign and re-encoding.
– Interoperable: an e-textbook should have the option of being used in different
learning environments and with different tools.
– Reusable: an e-textbook should have the option of its parts being used in different
contexts.
Choi et al (2018) propose five functional layers for development of next-generation
e-textbooks that support constructivist learning:
1. Core functions – existing features of e-books form the core functions for e-textbook
to replace printed textbook in learning. These functions improve the learning efficiency
but do not make substantial functional change in learning process and, thus, would be
the first step in deploying e-books to substitute printed text.
2. Internet connection – the ability to connect to the local area network and the Internet.
Internet connection not only empowers learners to acquire learning resources anytime
anywhere but also allows designing enhanced features to augment the learning with e-
books. Nevertheless, adding internet connection to e-textbooks can only enhance the
learning experience but do not revamp the learning process.
5
3. Sharing and collaboration – enable sharing and collaborating with other learners to
facilitate collaborative learning. Collaborative learning modifies how knowledge can
be created and acquired from the e-textbooks and, therefore, is a step towards trans-
forming e-textbooks from a self-directed learning environment to formal learning plat-
form.
4. Personalized learning – the capability to provide various types of learners with tailor-
made instructions that fit their learning needs. Personalized learning further modifies
the learning content delivery method of e-books and paths way for implementing new
teaching pedagogy with e-textbooks.
5. Intelligent tutor – the use of state-of-the-art intelligent methods to gradually under-
stand the learners by building student-centric models. Intelligent tutor completely re-
defines the e-textbook from a pure learning tool to a teaching and learning platform
While designing the interactive textbooks for Estonian school informatics, the fea-
tures suggested by Lokar and Choi et al were used as design requirements.
3 The context: informatics curriculum reform in Estonia
This case study took place in a unique context defined by ongoing curriculum reform
that has radically redefined the goals, content and delivery modes of Estonian school
informatics. Current national curriculum (Riigi Teataja, 2014) originates from 2014 and
it includes an elective subject ’Informatics’ that recommends to schools the following
contents to be taught as a separate subject (one 45-min lesson per week):
Grade 5 or 6 (age 11-12): ’Learning with Computer’ includes topics such as word
processing, file management, internet search, analysing and visualising data, making
presentations
Grade 8 or 9: ’Information Society Technologies’ includes topics such as online in-
formation systems and document management, eGovernance services, creating
online Personal Learning Environment, participating in online community of prac-
tice, digital content creation.
High school (grade levels 10-12) curriculum does not mention the subject of informat-
ics, but Science strand includes five elective courses with IT component (35 hours
each):
Using Computer for Inquiry
Basics of Programming and Software Development
Robotics and Mechatronics
Geoinformatics
3D Modelling
However, schools in Estonia are free to decide which elective subjects to include in the
school curriculum and how to teach these. Recent study (Praxis, 2017) showed that
Informatics was offered as a separate subject only in 55 per cent of basic schools and
76 per cent of upper-secondary schools (grade 10-12). The rest of the schools have
6
integrated some ICT-related topics into other subjects to improve digital literacy of
students. Coding is taught only in 2 per cent of basic schools and 23 per cent of upper-
secondary schools that offer Informatics as a separate subject. This is in sharp contrast
with articles published in the international media (e.g. Forbes, BBC) that claim that
coding is taught as a compulsory subject in all Estonian schools. One of the main rea-
sons why coding is not being taught in Estonian schools is the lack of qualified teachers
and textbooks. Teacher education is offered only in University of Tartu and Tallinn
University, both have started preparing informatics teachers since 1990. However,
within last 10 years there have been only a few applicants every year to the MEd pro-
gramme ’Teacher of Informatics’ in Tallinn University, which caused shutting down
the programme in 2015. University of Tartu continued offering it only as a minor spe-
cialisation module for mathematics/science teaching majors, but the enrolment number
were dropping there as well. There are two reasons for the lack of interest: (1) as there
are only few informatics lessons in every school, it does not provide a full teaching
position in majority of schools, (2) majority of university students who are interested
in computer science prefers to teaching a career in IT industry, where salaries are 2-4
times higher than teachers' salary. There only textbooks of informatics are available for
primary school (Grades 1-6) and for five elective courses in upper-secondary schools.
There are no specific software tools or online platform dedicated to teaching coding in
Estonian language. Schools that teach coding tend to use the international platforms
such as Code.org. There are some achievements in informatics education in Estonia,
the most important one being the Estonian Informatics Olympiad (EIO) that is organ-
ised annually by Tartu Science School since 1990-ies. Estonian students (most of whom
are self-taught or trained through non-formal education sector, e.g. coding clubs and
EIO coaching team) participate every year in international competitions such as Infor-
matics Olympiad and Bebras. There are also some success stories that belong to the
non-formal IT-education:
ProgeTiiger: in-service teacher training programme on teaching playful coding and
robotics in grades 1 4 (by HITSA Foundation),
SmartLab (NutiLabor): network of 170 coding clubs funded by Look@World Foun-
dation
Robotics competitions Robootika and First Lego League have massive attendance
Cyber security initiatives in education: Safer Internet Day, Küberpähkel competition
Privately-funded ICT projects in schools: Samsung Digital Turn, Samsung DigiPass,
Eesti 2.0, Codesters Club etc.
Success factors for strong non-formal coding education in Estonia are: interested kids
and parents, engagement of professionals from IT sector as trainers, availability of pub-
lic-private funding and partnerships, and collaboration between universities, schools,
companies and educational agencies. The main challenges of informatics education in
Estonia have been increasing since the turn of the century: lack of qualified teachers,
lack of textbooks and decrease in the willingness of schools to offer this subject to their
students. Currently the coding skills of Estonian students are assessed only in the non-
formal education sector (Informatics Olympiad, Bebras, First Lego League, Ro-
bootika). The things a little better with national level assessment of digital competences.
7
In 2017 and 2018, the joint research group of University of Tartu and Tallinn University
conducted an online pilot test of digital competence in grades 9 and 12 by the request
of the Ministry of Education and Research. The test is based on European digital com-
petence framework DigComp and includes only 2 tasks related to simple coding skills.
According to current plans, this test will be taken every spring by a random sample of
20 per cent of all students in grades 9 and 12 in upcoming years.
The expert group on informatics curriculum reform was formed at the HITSA foun-
dation in 2017 and it defined the following design principles for new informatics cur-
riculum for high schools:
the main focus is on real-life software (or software+hardware) prototyping project
the project can be defended as an inquiry project, as every high school graduate has
to conduct a 'mini thesis'
students themselves will select the topic and team mates for the project, appoint the
team leader
the project is collaborative, 4-6 team members have different roles (programmers,
designer, tester, analyst, project manager)
prior to the project, each student should take 1-2 courses to prepare for his/her role
in the team
curriculum should aim at balancing computational and design thinking
curriculum and learning resources should be designed for flipped classroom ap-
proach
teacher should be involved (both in elective courses and in the project) as a coach
and if possible, supported by a mentor from IT industry
As a result of iterative and participatory design process conducted by HITSA expert
group, the new informatics curriculum for high schools (GINF) was proposed in 2018.
It consists of a collaborative software project in Grade 11 that is preceded by five role-
based elective courses in Grade 10:
Introduction to programming
Basics of software engineering
User-centered design and prototyping
Software analysis and testing
Digital services
Participation in the software development project requires that each participant has
successfully passed 1-2 elective courses a year before, in accordance with their future
role in the project team (developer, analyst, tester, designer or project manager)
(HITSA, 2017). Due to the lack of qualified informatics teachers in Estonian schools,
the elective courses and their online learning environment is designed to support self-
directed and collaborative learning so it could be delivered also in these schools that do
not have any informatics teachers. The online learning environment designed for GINF
consists of the following components (HITSAa, 2017):
Interactive textbook built on Wordpress with Pressbooks plugin and H5P templates
for interactive self-tests
8
Moodle with VPL (Virtual Programming Lab) plugin for conducting and assessing
coding exercises
Trello, Github, Slack and GSuite for teamwork.
To ensure implementation of GINF curriculum also in those schools that don't have
a qualified informatics teacher, the textbooks had to support Flipped Classroom ap-
proach. Thus, the textbook should be designed to guide learners through learning ma-
terials, support the self-directed learning process by providing instant personalized
feedback on completed tasks etc., while leaving to teacher a role of coach or facilitator
who guides students through collaborative problem-solving process. At the moment
GINF textbooks include but a few elements of learning analytics support but there is
missing a path for using collected data for instant improvements and guidance, also a
bridge that connects collected data and predicts student learning outcomes and behav-
iour in specific cases: completion of different tasks, reading additional information etc.
In the future, the platform should enhance the support to innovative learning approaches
such as personalised and collaborative learning or peer learning. Learning analytics and
learner modeling should provide an overview of each and every student individual con-
tribution to common work to ensure that learning outcomes listed in curriculum was
obtained by all students.
This paper focuses on piloting the two textbooks designed by Tallinn University for
elective courses 'User-centered Design and Prototyping' and 'Software analysis and test-
ing'. Both textbooks were designed to support Flipped Classroom approach with dura-
tion of 8 or 16 weeks, depending on intensity of studies. This is why each textbook
contains 8 chapters, each chapter containing text, images, videos, examples, interactive
exercises made with H5P and 1-2 collaborative tasks for face-to-face workshop ses-
sions. The Table of Contents for both textbooks are presented below:
User-Centered Design and Prototyping (web.htk.tlu.ee/digitaru/disain/):
─ Design process and related key concepts
─ Mapping the needs of the target group
─ Personas and scenarios
─ Conceptual model
─ LoFi prototype of the User Interface
─ Interactive prototype of the User Interface
─ User experience evaluation
─ Pitching your prototype
Software Analysis and Testing (web.htk.tlu.ee/digitaru/testimine/):
─ Software quality
─ Who is the analyst?
─ Software requirements
─ Who is the tester?
─ Basics of software testing
─ Software testing process
─ Presenting the results of testing
9
Both textbooks were piloted in 6 schools in 2019 with more than 200 students, the
results and feedback are analysed below.
4 Research design and methods
Research design will follow mixed method case study approach (Yin, 2018).
According to Creswell & Plano Clarke (2018), 'a mixed methods case study design is a
type of mixed methods study in which the quantitative and qualitative data collection,
results, and integration are used to provide in-depth evidence for a case(s) or develop
cases for comparative analysis' (Creswell & Plano Clarke, 2017). This approach was
chosen in order to raise credibility of inferences from survey result and interviews
conducted within the present study and provide scientific evidence regarding
effectiveness of school informatics e-textbook design solutions.
According to (Zainal, 2007), case study explores and investigates a contemporary
real-life phenomenon through detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of
events or conditions, and their relationships. The case (pilot study) acts as a tool to
explore effectiveness and needs of further development of two informatics e-textbooks
('User centered design and prototyping' and 'Software analysis and testing') that were
composed by Tallinn University researchers for a new upper secondary school infor-
matics curriculum. According to Yin (2018) case studies can be divided to three types:
(a)explanatory, (b)descriptive and (c)exploratory. In our case, based on research ques-
tions stated above we will follow the path of explanatory case study.
By choosing the mixed method case study research design, we aimed to improve
understanding the experiences, concerns and improvement ideas of students and teach-
ers related to piloting the e-textbooks.
In order to ensure that different dimensions of informatics e-textbooks are addressed,
we used methodological and data triangulation techniques. As methodological triangu-
lation in present study we used literature review, post-pilot online survey of students
and interviews with teachers.
10
5 Results
All five new GINF textbooks were offered for piloting to Estonian high schools, ten
schools enlisted for this pilot. Out of these ten schools, six agreed to pilot the course '
User-Centered Design and Prototyping' and only two schools managed to find students
for 'Software Analysis and Testing' course. These six pilot schools included one
vocational school, one private full cycle school (grades 1 to 12), two large state high
schools and two mid-size municipal high schools. Two schools were located in the
capital city Tallinn, two in Pärnu, one in Tartu and one in Jõhvi. The post-pilot online
survey questionnaire was responded by 41 students, which is slightly more than a half
of the students who enrolled to the pilot course. The survey was conducted right after
the end of the pilot course in June, while the collaborative software project (where the
skills learned during the pilot course were put into practical use) took place in the
beginning of the next school year, from September to December.
First, we wanted to map the wider context regarding everyday use of online infor-
mation systems and learning resources by the students, as it could affect the learners'
attitudes towards using e-textbooks in general. The significant majority of respondents
(32 out of 41) reported daily use of school information system and 30 confirmed their
daily use of online information seeking for study purposes. However, less than half of
the respondents have been using regularly computers for accessing any kind of digital
learning resources, tests, note-taking and quizzes. Only six students reported their en-
gagement in coding and web design activities on weekly basis. 14 respondents have
studied informatics in basic school as a compulsory subject, 13 did not have any previ-
ous experience with informatics in school or outside, 8 had informal or non-formal
learning experiences related to IT (coding, robotics, 3D modelling, Web design). As
these two pilot courses did not have any prerequisites regarding previous informatics
knowledge and skills, the final sample for our survey matched the expected situation in
all Estonian schools in general.
Fig. 1. The distribution of students' responses regarding the use of e-textbook.
The Figure 1 above illustrates the students' responses to the question: ' How the use of
the e-textbook was arranged in your school during piloting?'. We expected the first two
11
options (Individually at home) would dominate, but it did not happen. The most com-
mon ways of reading the e-textbook were on the big screen or in small groups in class-
room. Surprisingly large share of respondents was using the e-textbook in pairs on a
shared computer, probably due to insufficient number of computers in school lab.
The Figure 2 below summarises the students' attitudes regarding the quality, diffi-
culty, organisation and ease of use of the piloted e-textbooks. The highest level of sat-
isfaction was related with interactive exercises, ease of use, support to independent
studying, support to knowledge retention and transfer. The respondents were less satis-
fied with ease of getting started with this e-textbook, user-friendliness and support to
flexible organisation of informatics studies. While the e-textbooks were specifically
designed to support Flipped Classroom approach, it is understandable that some stu-
dents did not cope so well with sudden expectance of independent, self-directed study-
ing in the domain that they had no previous experience, which is supposedly quite dif-
ferent from the rest of their high school studies.
Fig. 2. Students' satisfaction with e-textbooks.
We also asked the students to estimate the further need and potential uptake of these
e-textbooks in the future, both by themselves individually as well as by their school
(Fig.3). 75% of respondents suggested that this elective course should be offered to the
students in their school also in the future. Less than half of students thought they might
revisit this textbook in future. Now we know that those students who took part also in
the follow-up collaborative software development project a few months later, had to
revisit and use actively both e-textbooks, indeed. It is encouraging that more than a half
of the respondents think that there will be sufficient number of students in their school
who would be interested to take this course in the future.
Fig. 3. The potential future use of piloted e-textbooks.
12
We asked students to give free-form feedback about most boring/useless and most
interesting/useful topics covered by these two textbooks. Surprisingly, the most boring
chapter was building an interactive prototype (mentioned by 5 students), while most
interesting ones were the chapters about designing personas and pitching the prototype
(mentioned by 4 students). As it happens, there were two respondents who had exactly
opposite opinions. The reason for disliking the chapter about building an interactive
prototype was caused by insufficient support and examples on using Marvel app, but
also by the fact that Marvel app had frequent technical problems. Some respondents
were critical about mistakes in the text (the piloted version have not been thoroughly
edited). Flipped Classroom approach that was applied in theses pilot course found equal
number of proponents and opponents amount students, the former appreciated an unu-
sual way of studying, while latter would have preferred traditional lectures to independ-
ent work with the e-textbook.
The feedback from the teachers who participated in the pilot was collected by online
questionnaire and group interview. The data collected from teachers confirmed the re-
sults of students' survey. The main challenges were related with Flipped Classroom
approach that was not suitable to students that did not have independent learning habits.
However, teachers confirmed that majority of students appreciated more self-directed
form of learning in the pilot courses (with the exception of the private school where
majority of students preferred traditional delivery of the course). Teachers also con-
firmed that the topics of writing the personas and pitching the prototype were the best
ones in the textbook. An interesting comment was made by one teacher regarding the
scenario task - she said that her students did not believe this task could be "so easy and
fun" and were suspiciously looking for "catch". The teachers also said there should be
more real-life examples in the textbook, but the examples should be drawn from the
everyday context of students themselves.
6 Discussion and conclusions
The new e-textbooks for an experimental high school informatics curriculum were
successfully piloted, the feedback from students and teachers was generally very
positive and resulted with a number of suggestions how to improve the structure,
design, visuals and text of the e-textbooks. These suggestions have already been taken
into account when preparing the new versions of both e-textbooks that will be publicly
launched in the beginning of the next school year. As these textbooks are designed to
support independent studying and Flipped Classroom approach, it would be easy to use
these also in case the schools will not open in September and have to teach fully online.
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