Researchers at the University of Reading (Dyson & Haselgrove, 2000) observed that reading comprehension declined when students were scrolling as they read, rather than focusing on stationary chunks of text. Kaufman and Flanagan (2016) noted that when reading in print, study participants did better answering abstract questions that required inferential reasoning by contrast, participants scored better reading digitally when answering concrete questions. Schugar and colleagues (2011) found that participants reported using fewer study strategies (such as highlighting, note-taking, or bookmarking) when reading digitally. For example, Ackerman and Goldsmith (2011) observed that when participants could choose how much time to spend on digital versus print reading, they devoted less to reading onscreen and had lower comprehension scores. When researchers have altered the testing conditions or the types of questions they ask, discrepancies have appeared, suggesting that the medium does in fact matter.
Under those conditions, it’s not surprising that their performance would be consistent across platforms.īut the devil may lie in the details. Ask them to read passages and then answer SAT-style comprehension questions, and they tend to do so reasonably carefully, whether they read on a screen or on paper. These studies have typically focused on captive research subjects, mostly college students who commonly are paid to participate in an experiment or who participate to fill a course requirement. (See Baron, Calixte, & Havewala, 2017 for a review.) However, such findings need to be taken with a grain of salt. In nearly all cases, there was essentially no difference between the testing scenarios. Over the past decade, researchers in various countries have been comparing how much readers comprehend and remember when they read in each medium. Yet how much do we actually know about the educational implications of this emphasis on using digital media? In particular, when it comes to reading, do digital screens make it easier or harder for students to pay careful attention to words and the ideas behind them, or is there no difference from print?
And a growing number of assignments ask students to read on digital screens rather than in print. One-size-fits-all teaching is tilting toward personalized learning. Encyclopedias have yielded to online searches. Once-handwritten essays are now word-processed. The digital revolution has done much to reshape how students read, write, and access information in school.
Even millennials acknowledge that whether you read on paper or a digital screen affects your attention on words and the ideas behind them.What are the implications for how we teach?
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