MobyLives has reported before about disappointments in pilot programs by Amazon to implement Kindles as e-text readers, but a new report from Alison Damast at Business Week seems definitive — it’s headlined, “E-Book Readers Bomb on College Campuses.”

As the article notes,

Hopes were high last fall when the Amazon Kindle DX was distributed to a group of students at seven universities around the country in a classroom pilot program for the electronic reader. With students able to download class materials and textbooks easily onto the slender 10.2-ounce device, many thought the era of carrying heavy textbooks would soon be over. Just a few months later, their hopes were dashed, as students reported that the Kindle was a poor replacement for a textbook, hard to use in the classroom, and difficult to navigate.

“It’s an amazing device for recreational reading, but it’s not quite ready for prime time in higher education,” says Daniel Turner, associate dean of the masters and executive education programs at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, one of the schools that participated in the pilot.

Now, reports Damast,

It appears unlikely that the Amazon Kindle DX will be making a comeback in most college and graduate school classrooms this fall. Over the past few months, results from the pilot programs have trickled in, with most schools reporting that students were dissatisfied with the device as a classroom tool, and that many students had abandoned the Kindle just a few weeks into the experiment. At some schools, more than half the students surveyed said they wouldn’t recommend the e-reader to friends for use in the classroom, citing the device’s lack of flexibility, slow navigation within readings, and an inadequate file management system. Another problem that loomed over the pilot was the device’s inaccessibility to the blind and the visually impaired, due to a complicated menu navigation screen that makes it hard to access the read-aloud feature. Until Amazon addresses these problems, the Kindle is unlikely to be embraced by most of the higher education community, says Tracy Gray, managing director of the National Center for Technology Innovation in Washington.