In evaluating students' satisfaction with distance courses, Sheppherd and Martz concluded that a course's use of media rich technology affected how students evaluated the quality of the course. Courses that utilized tools such as "discussion forums, document sharing areas, and web casting" were viewed more favorably. Lai and Chang in 2011 used media richness as a variable in their study examining user attitudes towards e-books, stating that the potential for rich media content like embedded hyperlinks and other multimedia additions, offered users a different reading experience than a printed book. Further research by Lan and Sie (2010), that within the category of text based communication channels, there are significant differences that should shape an instructor's choice of technology. They studied the use of SMS, email and RSS and found that SMS is suitable for fast delivery, email affords greater content richness and RSS is the ideal format for content presentation on front-end mobile devices.