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Today’s undergraduate student faces many challenges. The challenges include paying for tuition and textbooks and finding a job upon graduation. These students are tech-savvy and seeking better ways to learn and retain material they learn in their classes. In addition, the textbook market is trying to evolve by serving this tech-generation through offering digital textbooks and other media-rich materials. New digital textbooks coupled with tablet e-readers are being used to help undergraduate students learn and retain information just as well as traditional paper textbooks. Undergraduate students have strong opinions about the use of paper and digital textbooks including the physical effects of digital e-readers, cost concerns for both formats of textbooks, and the features students want to see in e-readers. This study examined the effectiveness of using digital textbooks compared with traditional paper textbooks in undergraduate courses. Student performance comparisons were used to see if the digital versions have any significant influence on students’ achievement scores versus paper books and if there are any differences between genders. Moreover, regardless of performance outcomes, features of software and devices were explored to determine if these influence use of digital texts. Digital textbooks provide effective learning resources for undergraduate students at cost-effective prices. Features of digital e-readers can help students meet their learning goals and complete their coursework using new, interactive textbooks that pull together the content experts and multimedia.

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Civics education and constructive criticality are not usually found within the same curriculum. In America the two concepts tend to be considered as antithetical in content and practice. Students and teachers do not approach education about the citizen‘s responsibilities with great necessity or urgency, and when they do approach the subject it is from the perspective of inherent rights that should not be questioned, since they are by birth granted, albeit only to some. The idea of criticality is also not considered to be part of the developmental need of a citizen, since the overall sentiment associated with it is one of negativity. However, a philosophical analysis of the foundational principles of both concepts demonstrates a singular genesis, one that has been obscured through the erroneous development of a citizenry for the sake of the maintenance of the status quo. This research develops a clearer picture of the state of civic education in the United States through a review of the pertinent literature in the field, including the historical texts considered to be foundational to American civics curricula, as well as the most prominent texts presently in use. The study clarifies this image further through the design and application of a philosophically analytic tool based on a hermeneutic review of concepts, predominant language usage, and critical reasoning. This extension is accomplished by scrutinizing a particular civics curriculum to determine its philosophical similarity to the concepts of the originating documents of the United States. A culminating summary of the results derived from the analysis concludes the study, along with some pedagogic suggestions that should help align future curricular designs more closely with the founding principles of the American republic.