Students may not like this, but some digital textbooks
can tell instructors just how much of the course reading they are actually doing.
The digital text can even determine if a student fell asleep with the book
open.
Not surprisingly, a new study found students who spent more time actually reading their textbooks—not just
speed-skimming—got better grades. The survey of 269 undergraduates at Texas
A&M University-San Antonio using digital content reported that the number
of minutes spent reading was an important factor in getting better grades, but
that students averaged less than three hours of reading per class.
“It’s not that students were overworked or required to
read a crazy amount,” Reynol Junco, the Iowa State University professor who conducted
the research, said in a report for Bloomberg Business. “The reading was pretty fair for college students.”
The good news, according to Junco, is that checking
study habits can also help faculty identify students who are in trouble before
they get a bad grade.