“Differences in Print and Screen Reading in Graduate Students”

by Lauren J. Short | Xchanges 14.1, Spring 2019

Conclusion

As suggested by Vandenhoek (2013), students need explicit instruction in how best to read on screen. He proposes a digital literacy workshop that university students could take after their first semester to teach them annotation strategies on digital texts. I would recommend this approach, though how we go about teaching and appointing who has the most qualifications to teach such a workshop may be a future issue to contend with.

I believe the way to go about alleviating the burden of who will teach digital literacy workshops and the resources that might require is by having instructors talk about how to read and mark up a text, before assigning their first reading assignments to students. Students should also be provided multiple samples of what the instructor has read in print and on screen, when possible. Allowing students to practice reading strategies, not only in one medium but in both print and screen, will provide them with confidence to read more effectively, as well as more options.

Furthermore, as technology advances, hopefully digital interfaces will become easier to interact with and more intuitive to use, though it is worth noting that technology is constantly changing, and everyone, even digital “natives,” will need to be updated frequently. Instructors should try to remain vigilant to the technologies emerging around them, so as to best be prepared for how to accommodate their students.

Teaching students to read within their disciplines or within unfamiliar genres may seem to be an expenditure of time that instructors cannot afford alongside course-specific content and material, but transparency on the part of an instructor is incredibly valuable and can take less time than imagined. Bringing in metacognitive practices and exercises in the classroom can allow students to understand why certain disciplines value things over others, and that we do not simply follow arbitrary rules. Reading seems like a self-explanatory task and one that needn’t require focus in the classroom, but the time it takes to discuss how to read is miniscule in comparison to the frustration of a room full of students who couldn’t parse out the nuances of a text.