I have been reading about paper vs. screen reading attempting to understand the research and related concerns about learning from on-screen content. Part of my reluctance to be concerned about the potential downside of reading/learning from content on a screen comes from my own experience. I know personal experiences can lead to biases and this is one of the important reasons to follow quality research. However, I am coming to think about the way I learn as perhaps a way to think about how students will learn if they can get past old habits and learn some skills that they traditionally have not learned for some obvious practical reasons.
I think a large portion of what was my job when I was still working was a knowledge worker. If you ignore the research expectation, the work of a college professor might be described as knowledge worker. We consume large amounts of content, mostly by reading, reflect on what we have encountered from multiple sources, and use the result to inform our teaching and guide our research. The input to this process are the books and the journal articles written by other scholars. These documents are not the only inputs, but even when we interact with others to work through ideas, the origins for these conversations are in documents of some type. To some extent, this is the case for all learners. Even through formal learning settings include presentations and discovery experiences, written information is typically present to offer extended information, different perspectives, and explanations for what has been experienced.
For a decade or more, I worked with documents on a screen. This was a matter of convenience. For example, there was no way I could personally afford all of the journals containing the articles I wanted to read, and it was far easier to use services available through my library to download pdfs of these articles than to walk to the library to see if I could make a copy of these articles. In many cases, my library did not even own journals containing articles I wanted and would have to contact another institution to have a copy of a desired article sent if I demanded a “hard copy”. The digital resources were a large step forward.
Convenience and cost aside, I think there is a far more important issue to be considered here. Work based on the review of documents requires far more than reading. A major portion of my researcher involved study behavior and I always liked to make a distinction between reading and studying. I liked to think of studying as what happens after initial exposure to content (reading). We learn from thinking about what we read to a far greater extent than would occur with a single exposure. We stop and think. We come back later to review. We take notes. We answer questions. We discuss. I believe I now study nearly everything I read from a screen because technology allows far greater efficiency and sometimes capabilities that have not been available with paper resources.
For example, consider that I highlight and annotate heavily as a read. This is a way for me to process the content, but these external strategies also allow me to access information more efficiently in the future. When I write or when I want to review a resource I first read a couple of years ago, highlights and annotations offer a very efficient way to review. It is true that one can do this with paper resources, but working from my computer at this moment, I can perform these processes with hundreds of documents and I can search for things I thought or highlighted when I can not remember the names of authors or the journal containing an idea I now want to use.
I tend to think of what I do as a combination of distilling and exploring. I bring together ideas from multiple sources, combine or at least cross-reference these ideas, and add my own thoughts. This is also an external representation of learning.
I think this would be a useful way to think about what students should be doing. Working with concepts externally to help develop internal representations or models has also been a useful way to think about what activities adds to information exposure. We can do some internal processing without these external tactics in some cases, but this is often only true for some learners and for most learners studying some content areas.
What always intrigued me as a researcher interested in study behavior was what students thought studying/learning was and how it happened. For example, so many students I encountered in lower level courses seemed satisfied if they were able to read the assigned material. Some might even make the effort to read the assignments twice. The core notion that you must find a way to think about this content was not appreciated. Even the notion that reading something multiple times rather than trying to focus second/third readings on sections that were important, but not understood had seemingly not occurred to many. The metacognitive capability of identifying priority ideas and important ideas that were not fully understood was either not considered or not possible. Evaluating and developing study skills became a personal interest.
Back to the role of technology. Consider my work flow. Would some of the tactics I described even be allowed of a high school student reading their biology or history text? I am guessing they would not be allowed to highlight or write their personal insights in the margins. It is not surprising that when they find themselves in a setting (college) when this is possible, they have little idea how to do these things in a productive way. Even more, access to digital resources offers additional opportunities beyond those that techniques that transfer from paper and these capabilities (e.g., the inclusion of self-generated questions) are often unknown or poorly developed when available.
Where do we expect students to learn these skills?
My present interest in layering as an instructional design process and as providing external study tactics for learners relates to these possibilities. I write about layering as something educators and learners can add “on top” of online resources, but many of these same ideas also apply to digital resources such as digital books (pdfs).
The capabilities of layering include the opportunity for educators to demonstrate and evaluate student study skills and for shared studying among students.
I tire a bit of the call for innovation when educators seem to mean add new areas to the curriculum (coding) or abandon materials designed to meet learning needs (abandon the textbook). First, these ideas are seldom new and, in addition, offer little to address the core cognitive demands for learning. I believe effective innovation will come from finding better ways to support the cognitive demands of learning and thinking.
I think it is time to consider teaching students how to “read/study” on digital devices recognizing that there are options not available when teaching students to “read/study” a traditional textbook. How do modern information workers (learners) actually work?
For a similar perspective, you might want to read (probably on a screen as the journal is not carried by most libraries) the following:
Gu, X., Wu, B., & Xu, X. (2015). Design, development, and learning in e-Textbooks: What we learned and where we are going. Journal of Computers in Education, 2(1), 25-41.
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