Building the Bridge: Digital vs. Print Text

At some point throughout our first year of college we all get to go through some struggles due to the changing teaching methods college professors use. However, perhaps one of the most common struggles we have as first year college students and first year composition (FYC) is that of when it comes to having to read pdf articles or any online texts. Many times when we as students begin our first year composition courses we find ourselves having a hard time understanding material when it is viewed on a screen.The simple fact that we are reading off a screen intervenes with our overall reading comprehension of these digital texts simply because we are not used to reading articles in this format. As students we just don't gain the same reading comprehension when we read something digitally as when we do as hard copies. Thus, there is many theories to why this happens. Many believe that online ads or distracting backgrounds are the cause a good reading comprehension. Others have gone further and said that it is because of different reading strategies that are used when reading hard copies and reading on a screen. However, even though the reasons for why this happens are unclear, we mention all this is because this is not only “a struggle most students go through” but something we have experienced ourselves at the beginning of our english 1301 courses. When we first began getting assignments related to reading articles online, it was hard for us to adapt to reading articles this way since in highschool it was usually all about print text. Thus, as our first year composition courses kept going, we noticed that our reading comprehensions of digital and print text reading comprehensions really did differ; our print reading comprehensions were often much better than those of our digital text reading comprehensions. Although for us it was not a major issue that was able to negatively impacted our academic performance, we were able to observe how for some students it was.That is how we came to pick up interest in finding out why or how digital text reading affects FYC students’ academic performance and what we can do to overcome this issue.

In various researches online reading has been directly connected with online classes, that students chose over the traditional classroom environment. In such researches, it has been found that college students commonly struggle with online classes due to the amount of reading they have to do through a screen. Jorge Gaytan made a study with students who were taking online classes, and he found that many students struggle because they don’t have the skills required to do read online PDF’s or online articles. Students in high school are only taught the traditional reading strategies of underlining and doing side notes on printed copies of articles. All of which are great strategies but just designed to help when reading hard copies, not online text. Thus, with technology advancing and online articles and books, different new skills are need to reach certain level of comprehension. Such skills are what Ian O’Byrne and Mary Keller Boudreaux insist that students need to acquire because without these skills, students would struggle more because they were not prepared. They suggested that these skills don’t come to students because for the most part all of the reading they have previously done in high school has been on print, not digitally such as it is required in most college level classes. O’Byrne highlighted that “If you cannot decode words accurately and effortlessly offline, comprehension becomes more difficult online. If you cannot read to locate and critically evaluate information it becomes very difficult to solve the problem…”(Page 355), which also relates to Boudreaux’s point of view that online reading requires different literacy skills than printed reading. Although printed and online reading can be very similar, they argued that reading off a screen requires a higher level of comprehension, which students are not able to get at first. Furthermore, in another research Sandberg agrees and discusses this same idea that students are not ready to do online reading when they enter to college; a piece of research and evidence to which Harun & Gazi responded to by saying that students are not ready because they don’t practice enough before college. Sandberg mentions how students might benefit by reading PDF’s or online articles, but that it might be impossible to see the benefits the first times because students are just used to printed text. All this professors came to the conclusion that online reading is a problem that many students face, not only in online classes but in traditional classrooms where assignments require to read PDF’s or articles online.

However, in all this research not all aspects of a full solution to helping students are covered or mentioned at all. From all this we learn that there is many reasons to why students have difficulties with online reading and that there is many ways to go about it. The articles we covered, mention that some ways that teachers can help students with these issues is by teaching them strategies to use while reading online and having them practice or “gain experience”. However, most of them focus primarily on issues and vaguely suggest any solutions to students, they only cover suggestions to professors. For example, Jorge Gaytan only talks about online reading been a problem in online courses and how students are affected, but doesn’t provide solutions nor goes more into depth about possible solutions. Similarly, O’Byrne and Keller Boudreaux both mainly just talk about the major problem with online reading and the skills that students lack to succeed. Although these two articles talk extensively about the major problem that reading off a screen can be, they don’t provide a clear solution or tips on how students can achieve such skills. The closest thing to a solution was mentioned an article by Harun & Gazi which suggested that students need to learn different strategies and then put them to practice in order to gain experience and fully comprehend digital text. Yet, this was a study done in Turkey with Turkish students. Perhaps not exactly what would completely help out first year compositions students in the United States.

So, since we didn't quite find the answers we were looking for in our secondary research we went ahead and did some research of our own, with a experiment on first year composition students. The goal of our primary research was to find out whether reading off a screen really caused students to gain a different reading comprehension than when reading off hard copy material and if so how or why it differed.Therefore, we decided to develop an experiment that would help us easily compare and analyze the reading comprehension of students when reading something off a screen and as a hard copy.

The process of this experiment/case study was pretty simple; it consisted of having 4 FYC students individually read an article on a screen and write their comprehension on a paper, and then repeating the same process with another article but as a hard copy. The idea was that not only would we analyze their final reading comprehension but also their behavior as they were reading these articles. Thus, in order to keep deep focus in each individual student we decided to do the experiment with them on different days and times. After conducting the experiment, observing the students behavior, and analyzing their written reading comprehension, we found some pretty interesting things.

At a glance as you can see below in the visuals it was pretty evident that students had the need to interact with the

article on hand. In fact, 3 out of the 4 not only underlined on their printed articles but 2 of them even jotted down some side notes on the paper as they read which is shown in image 1 (image to the right). Furthermore, after we read their reading comprehension we noticed that the students who had made side notes on their paper had used even them to write down their reading comprehension. Such was the case of student #3 who as we can see in image 2 (image below) did side notes in his/her own words and then used them to write the reading comprehension which turned out to be short but straight to the point. Not to mention that as the student who jotted down side notes read they seemed very focused

while reading their printed article. Thus, evidence of this was not only provided by our own observations on them and the fact that they made side notes but also just by their final reading comprehensions which were detailed and concise. In contrast, when the students read their articles on the computer, we noticed several differences from the very beginning. To begin with, we noticed that as the students read their online articles, they seemed to have a hard time concentrating. We say this because we noticed some of the students kept rereading lines as they moved further in the article. At one point a student’s attempt to concentrate was very much evident by his/her facial expressions, and one other students even mentioned that it was the background and ads of the article were distracting him/her. Thus, there was only student who to our surprise jotted down side notes on a separate paper as he/she read off the screen. This student basically just wrote down exact same words that were already on the article and used them to write the reading comprehension as we can see in image 3 (to the left). Although all of the students wrote a decent reading comprehension of their online articles, when compared to their reading comprehension from their hard copy article we noticed that they seem shorter, more vague, and aren't as well thought through. Furthermore, after looking at the reading strategies students’ used, such as underlining and jotting down side notes, we have also observed that using such reading strategies has a great impact on a student’s final reading comprehension. Therefore, this evidently reinforces the idea that students have a need to interact with a hard copy in order to get a good reading comprehension. Hence, some of the reasons why students can have such a hard time with reading off a screen can go beyond just the distraction of ads and backgrounds or the fact that they might not be used to reading online; it can also have a lot to do with a lack of being able to use the typical reading strategies when reading off a screen and the fact that these students have little to none experience reading digital text. It all comes down to the students’ unfulfilled need of having the ability to interact with what they are reading.

Now, considering that the main reason for students inability to get a good reading comprehension of digital text comes down to students having the need to interact with some form of notes while reading, we have concluded that what students need is a way of turning the typical reading strategies for print text into strategies they can use when reading digital text. However, you may be wondering how it is that we as students can do this. Are we supposed to get an expo marker and circle, underline, and do side notes all over our electronic devices? Well, this is perhaps not the best idea. Another possible suggestion or solution would be to use computer programs or apps that do let you “write” on the pdf. Yet, although this is also a good alternative, these kinds of computer programs and apps tend to be more complicated and can also be somewhat distracting if we think about it. So then the question remains as to what can we do to fulfill this need of using reading strategies and interacting with the digital article you're reading ? Well, it took us some time to figure it out but it turns out that we actually don't have to go that far. As we mentioned it previously in our primary research we found that one of the student who read the article online had done side notes on a separate sheet of paper. Although they still didn't get the best reading comprehension out of what they read, it seems to be that it did help the student. Doing side notes such as that of writing down key works and other annotations as reading reading strategies on a separate paper can certainly help improve your reading comprehension of digital text. Thus, it is much more simpler than using a ny computer program or app and you can even do this when a teacher is showing an article up on the projector screen.

There is no doubt students struggle with online reading, both outside and inside classrooms, most of them don’t know how to deal with the problem. The findings that we gather throughout this research conduct to the conclusion that students need to engage more with the online reading, in order to have a better comprehension. The solution to the lack of comprehension was given by the only student who made notes in a separate piece of paper while reading the online article. Students that are struggling with the same situation, should engage more with the article or PDF by making notes in a separate piece of paper, by doing so they will have a better understanding of the passage. The notes can include main ideas, key words and important events/dates, with this notes the students will be able to retain more from the reading and use the notes in order to come up with a comprehension or to answer questions about the reading itself.

Works Cited:

Boudreaux, Mary Keller. "Survey Of Developmental Students' Print And Online Metacognitive Reading." Educational Research Quarterly 39.3 (2016): 3-22. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.

Cigdem, Harun & Yildirim Osman Gazi. “Effects of students’ characteristics on online learning readiness: A vocabulary college example”. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education. July 2015.

O'Byrne, W. Ian et al.. “Assessing the New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension: An Informative Interview with W. Ian O'byrne, Lisa Zawilinski, J. Greg Mcverry, and Donald J. Leu at the University of Connecticut”. The Reading Teacher 62.4 (2008): 354–357. Web…

Rose, Mike. "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer's Block." College Composition and Communication 31.4 (1980): 389.

Sandberg, Kate. "College Student Academic Online Reading: A Review Of The Current Literature." Journal Of College Reading & Learning (College Reading & Learning Association) 42.1 (2011): 89-98. Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 25 Feb. 2016