"Differences in Print and Screen Reading in Graduate Students"
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ConclusionAs 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. As I’ve suggested above, 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. Students who feel as though they are reading ineffectively on screen may learn how to navigate this medium more successfully, providing them with the training and confidence that many students in my study felt they lacked. 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. It will also be interesting to consider the next generation of teachers—true digital “natives” who will have completely grown up with technology at their fingertips—and how this affects future pedagogies. There can sometimes be resistance from instructors who do not feel it is their responsibility to teach writing in addition to course-specific material. While this is a legitimate concern, it can be difficult for students to know how to write within a genre and discipline with which they have no familiarity. Similarly, it can be a struggle for students to keep up with course readings that require a level of comprehension when they have never been assigned reading in the genre or discipline before. Instructors may be blind to what their students don’t know because they have so much experience that the process feels natural to them. In order to best serve students, instructors should consider what it was like when they first started out in their disciplines and if there were any strategies they picked up along the way that may be useful for their students to know. Lessons such as these can contribute to richer classroom conversations because students are not only aware of what they need to read, but how to read it. 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. If it feels as though classroom discussions are lagging, I would encourage instructors take part of a lesson to show students how to read the material. Instructors should share with students how they read, personally. 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. Vandenhoek’s (2013) research shows that students will most often read the text format assigned to them in class. Instructors assigning digital texts can provide instruction on how to read these texts so that students who prefer to read in print will gain greater comfort interacting in a new format. Students who prefer reading digitally may also gain further insight into their own practices. While the lesson might be lost on some, there will be students who will not only learn how to read for the course they are currently taking, but will also be able to take that knowledge and apply it as they move forward in their educations. |