College
students keep telling anyone who’ll listen that it’s easier to study from a
print textbook than a digital one. There’s a growing body of scientific
evidence to back that up, according to an article in The New Yorker magazine.
Many researchers
are considering the impact of digital reading, including Maryanne Wolf, who has
spent years studying the development of brain comprehension as reading media
have changed over the centuries.
Since the
recent rise of digital materials, Wolf has seen a rapid decline in “deep
reading”—the kind students need to fully understand and retain subject matter.
She’s gotten letters from college and university professors concerned that
their students couldn’t master the course topic because they were simply
skimming the reading on-screen.
Several
studies determined people read more quickly on an electronic screen, and
therefore tend to think less about the topic as they go. That, in turn, means
they don’t retain as much. Links embedded in digital materials, which are intended
to provide a richer reading experience by connecting directly to additional
information, actually ended up interrupting the flow of reading and sidetracked
the reader’s mental processes.
However, a
new study with fifth-graders showed that annotation tools, which are included
with most reading apps and mobile devices, can help improve digital reading
considerably, provided that students are taught how to use the tools. Students
who highlighted, added notes, and bookmarked pages were able to engage more deeply
with the content and remember what they’d read.
