Plug in or Paper: Does the Medium Affect Comprehension?
What has four wheels, 25 screens, sits in the back of the classroom and is covered in dust? Any guesses yet? What if I told you that what was inside of it could change the entire dynamic of the classroom. Would you believe me if I said that this object sits abandoned in a corner, used a handful of times during the school year and is never used to it’s full capability?
It’s a sight all too familiar, a cart of iPads laying dormant among the hustle and bustle of a productive classroom. Why exempt such a valuable resource from a class full of students who could make good use of them? As educators, we are hesitant that students who read on electronic mediums, such as the iPad, will lack reading comprehension or be distracted. Truly, students are more capable of reading on a digital medium than what we could ever expect.
Readers are slowly starting to prefer reading on an electronic medium rather than a physical book. Generation Z has been exposed to technology since infancy and are expected to be more technologically literate than any generation before them. Just as Generation Z is adapting to technological advances, the education system is as well. Technology is flowing past the schoolhouse gates at a rapid rate and we need to arm ourselves in order to keep up with the transition.
The Digital Age: Then and Now
So what is it like to grow up in the digital age? The technological world is drastically different now than what it was ten years ago. A typical house a decade ago had a land line, a few box TV’s, a bulky computer with an Ethernet cable and maybe a brick for a cellphone. Fast-forward a decade and every house has a flat screen TV, multiple cellphones, wifi-internet, iPads and digital notebooks at their disposal. With all of the change in technology, people were bound to change the way they do daily activities. Reading is no exception to this evolution.
In the past few years alone reading, and more specifically reading behavior, has begun to transform. With the introduction to the Kindle and online books, readers are training their brains to read both online and printed mediums. In a study done by Bar-Ilan University, students of two groups were asked to read and edit two texts then their comprehension was monitored. One portion of the group consisted of people who are frequent computer users, familiar with Word, and the other portion of the group was made up of people who use the computer less than one hour a day. All participants would read and edit via digital format and a print version of text. Afterwards, they filled out a questionnaire that determined their comprehension. It was determined that there was no significant difference in comprehension between the two groups, other than the digital participants finished sooner. (Eden, S., & Eshet-Alkalai, Y., 2013). This study suggests that there are different ways in which our brain reacts to the medium that we read. In fact, there are many studies that produce generally the same results. In Using E-readers and Internet Resources to Support Comprehension, two groups were studied and comprehension was monitored but they were also asked to gauge enjoyment of their reading experience. The two groups of students had no significant differences in comprehension. However, when it came to their level of enjoyment those who read with the digital medium said that they enjoyed their reading more. Additionally, those who read print took longer to finish reading the text than the digital users (Wright, 2013, 369). Both of these studies conclude that digital readers are likely to finish their reading sooner than those who read print, yet the comprehension remains the same.
Physicality in Reading
In The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens, Jabr discusses the physicality of reading and how print benefit from connections that the brain makes that digital readers do not experience. He describes reading print as “navigating [a] textual landscape” in which “the brain literally goes through the motions of writing when reading, even if the hands are empty” (Jabr, 2013). This is because the brain recognizes print as written language, whereas it does not with digital formats. When reading print, the brain is trained to read word by word, line by line and stanza to stanza. This requires spending more time reading in order to process the words. Thus, the reader is taken through the journey of the “landscape” and his/her thoughts are recorded by the layout of the book.
One can feel the thickness of the pages read in one hand and pages to be read in the other. Turning the pages of a paper book is like leaving one footprint after another on the trail — there’s a rhythm to it and a visible record of how far one has traveled. All these features not only make text in a paper book easily navigable, they also make it easier to form a coherent mental map of the text (Jabr, 2013).
These physical connections that print readers experience are ones that we have all experienced ourselves. We may be able to remember a certain occurence in a book we read by the placement of the text. For example, we may remember that the character Gretchen, said, “I’m going to Grandma’s house” on the bottom left-handed side of a page toward the beginning of the book. We made a physical connection between the text and the physical placement of the phrase in the book. Reading on a digital screen does not have the same effect. The screen remains the same, untouchable, and readers mindlesly scroll through text at a constant rate.
“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading.” (2014, Rosenwald).
There is not a “textual landscape” to navigate through with a digital medium. Rather, our minds quickly debrief the webpage looking for keywords and filtering through subtitles to determine meaning. Skimming is just one way that our brain has adapted to reading digital material. We have trained ourselves to use reading methods that are quick and efficient and digital mediums quench the thirst of constant incoming information. Although reading online may be a quick way of retrieving immediate results via the process of skimming, readers need to be aware of the consequences of solely choosing digital formats instead of print. Maryanne Wold of Tufts University explains, “We should be simultaneously reading to children from books, giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing their immersion into the technological, digital age.” (2014, Rosenwald). In order to increase comprehension with digital mediums, teachers should encourage readers to slow down as they would if they were reading print. If one continues to read only digitially they may run into a problem that a lot of readers are facing. They can’t read through a printed book without growing frustrated. They can’t read through a printed book without growing frustrated. This podcast from New Tech City explains Michael Rosenwald’s frustration and his solution to the problem, learning to read again by slowing down.
Today, reading from both mediums is equally important and this is why it is important to not abandon either method if we want our brains to become bi-literate. We must allow ourselves the time to practice excercising our bi-literate brains with each medium equally.
Does having a tactile object matter when it comes to comprehension?
In terms of comprehension, having a tactile object does not make a difference. However, when it comes to the reading experience, the brain naturally explores the “textual landscape” of a printed book (Jabr, 2013). This is where the concern begins to set in. As teachers, we want our students to take the time to read a piece of literature so that they can dig into it, explore the message that the author is trying to convey and most importantly enjoy what they are reading. With a digital medium, students skim through the piece of literature without exploring the “textual landscape” that is otherwise offered in a print book.
Comprehension remains the same no matter which medium a student reads from. That’s a relief. However, experience changes dependent on the medium. This leads teachers to the question, “How can I help students explore the entire reading experience no matter which medium they use? Is it even possible?”
What does this mean for teachers?
Using a digital medium comes with an array of concerns for teachers. Some may even consider nixing the idea all together because it would require them to teach methods on how to read with technology. This can be daunting and just add to the laundry list of things teachers need to do everyday, but it’s worth it. If teachers are going to introduce a digital format for reading they need to know how the presence of an iPad changes the reading experience. In several studies dealing with digital and print reading mediums, it has been discovered that there really is no great difference in comprehension. However, there is a difference in the way a student navigates, or experiences, the text when reading print. This navigation is more than just reading from a physical book, it’s about the senses of readers that are heightened that makes for a more memorable experience. Is there a happy medium between comprehension and experience, or do teachers have to settle for one or the other?
Giving students preference during independent reading to choose from a medium gives the student the opportunity to lead his/her learning. Some students may heavily rely on their devices while others solely choose print. It is best to encourage students to have a healthy balance between the mediums they choose on a daily basis. Students should be aware that technology changes the way that their brains work. It is important that they know the effects that their choices make on their learning and it is best to train their brains how to read with any medium. It is equally important that students begin to practice slowing down and digesting what they read with a digital format.
Reading strategies in books can be translated into strategies for digital mediums with just a bit of tweaking. In a study by Davis, “While some strategies were invoked more in the digital compared to the print condition, students tended to use similar strategies in both conditions.” (Davis, 2012, 847). The reading strategies that readers are encouraged to use while reading from print are the same strategies that they use when reading digitally. Readers use what they know to make sense of the world around them. This is why it is incredibly important that we begin transitioning all students into the bi-literate era so that they can apply their reading strategies to any text that they read throughout the day, not just limited to printed material. It’s time to make the push within our classrooms to incorporate technology during independent reading. Students are ready for the change and it’s time that we get ready for it as well. It’s time to dust off the tech cart and wheel into a balanced use of digital and printed texts for students to choose from during reading.
If you are interested in learning more about this topic consider checking out the following links:
- Print versus screen and the physicality of paper, by Mario Garcia
- Ebooks Will Make Us Dumber, Or They Won’t, Forbes
Sources:
(2014). The ‘Bi-literate’ Brain: The Key to Reading in a Sea of Screens [Radio series episode]. In New Tech City. New York, New York: Manoush Zomorodi.· Eden, S., & Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2013). The effect of format on performance: Editing text in print versus digital formats. British Journal Of Educational Technology, 44(5), 846–856.
Davis, D. d., & Neitzel, C. c. (2012). Collaborative sense-making in print and digital text environments. Reading & Writing, 25(4), 831–856.
Eshet-Alkalai, Y., & Geri, N. (2010). Does the medium affect the message? The effect of congruent versus incongruent display on critical reading. Human Systems Management, 29(4), 243–251.
Jabr, F. (2013). The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/.
Rosenwald, M. (2014). The Washington Post. Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/serious-reading-takes-a-hit-from-online-scanning-and-skimming-researchers-say/2014/04/06/088028d2-b5d2-11e3-b899-20667de76985_story.html.
Wright, S., Fugett, A., & Caputa, F. (2013). Using E-readers and Internet Resources to Support Comprehension. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 16(1), 367–379.
