Fascinating findings. When it comes to studying and trying to retain information, I've found in my personal experience that greater "inefficiency" ironically l

Fascinating findings. When it comes to studying and trying to retain information, I've found in my personal experience that greater "inefficiency" ironically leads to better retention i.e. the fact that I spend more time and effort taking physical pen-and-paper notes in a notebook causes me to dwell longer on the material I'm studying, thus increasing my retention and understanding. You could argue that today's technology makes it TOO easy to read material and take notes on it, causing you to spend less time on the material and decreasing retention. And I think this finding is key: The paper textbook helps them to avoid the distractions of being on the computer or the Internet, the temptations associated with checking e-mail, Facebook, or surfing the Web for unrelated information. Perhaps giving out e-readers at schools used ONLY for e-textbooks would help e-textbooks catch on more. The same reason going to a library will help you study better than you would in your room, perhaps having a dedicated interface for class readings would help you to focus much more than having your e-textbook buried somewhere in your desktop/tablet/smartphone.