Projectors have become one major medium in modern teaching, with large area-size displays emerging as an alternative. What concerns the general public is whether such eLearning would impose threat on eyes, by noting blue enriched white light to be hazardous to retina and else. Especially, little was known about their permissible viewing time under a certain viewing clarity. We had hence carried out a quantitative study with the use of a blue-hazard quantification spectrometer to determine the permissible viewing time when using a projector and a large size TV screen for displaying. Surprisingly, the large TV screen could permit a much longer viewing time, meaning which is more eye-friendly. It is plausibly because its resolution is much higher than that of the projector. Two dilemmas were observed in such eLearning; those sitting in the front would suffer a much higher illuminance, leading to a much shorter viewing time, while those sitting in the back would need a far much larger font size to see clearly. To ensure both viewing clarity and a sufficiently long permissible viewing time, orange text on black background is suggested to replace the defaulted black text on white background. The permissible viewing time could hence drastically increase from 1.3 to 83 h at 2 m by viewing a 30 pt font for the TV and from 0.4 to 54 h for the projection. At 6 m, the permissible viewing time was increased from 12 to 236 h for the TV and from 3 to 160 h for the projection, based on a viewable 94 pt font. These results may help educators and other e-display users to wisely apply the display tools with safety.
Keywords: Media in education; Permissible viewing time; Projector; TV; Viewing clarity; eLearning.
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