The document discusses strategies for reading online from the perspectives of teachers, librarians, and eLearning staff. It explores how reading digital text differs from print, challenges of online reading comprehension, and best practices. Key findings include the importance of teaching reading strategies tailored for online environments, providing annotation and note-taking tools, evaluating sources, and addressing issues like distraction. The presenters aim to apply these insights to improve online, hybrid, and web-enhanced course design and student support.
1. Reading Strategies
for the Digital Age
BELLINGHAM TECHNICAL COLLEGE FACULTY
LEARNING COMMUNITY
Presenters:
Dawn Hawley
Judi Wise
Traci Taylor
Stoo Sepp
2. WA State Digital
Literacy Library
Grant
Reading
Apprenticeship
Initiatives
Student Support
Self Help
LibraryInstruction
eLearning
3. Who we are:
We are a Faculty Learning Community from
Bellingham Technical College with a shared
interest in online reading and comprehension.
What we are doing:
We are exploring online reading strategies, tools
and best practices as teachers, librarians and
eLearning staff.
4. Our Project Research
Questions
1. How does reading digital text differ from reading
traditional hard copy text?
2. What are the differences in reading hard copy
text, static digital text, and hypertexts?
3. What are the best practices for reading digital
texts?
4. What modifications can we make to our courses,
workshops and trainings that are online, hybrid
and web enhanced in regards to reading?
5. Our Activities
● Student Surveys & Focus Groups
● Words Onscreen: the Fate of
Reading in a Digital World
● Other Research & Bibliography
Cover of “Words Onscreen” used with permission of author.
6. Surveys & Focus Groups
To gain insight into students’ preferences, strategies,
strengths, and challenges with reading all texts
7. Focus group findings
"Focus Group Word Cloud" by BTC FLC, Bellingham Technical College Faculty Learning
Community Reading in the Digital Age is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
8. Our Themes, Distilled
Common themes that have emerged from our research so far…
● Environments for digital texts are different than for print text
● Academic or deep reading online presents unique
challenges
● Reading comprehension requires different strategies online
● Distraction is an issue for online readers
● Quality & credibility of online material is harder to determine
● The physicality of printed text is still important for many
readers
● Students struggle with how to annotate & take notes
digitally
● Device and internet availability is an issue
"Distilling at MBD" by Mount Baker Distillery is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
10. Instruction: Question
How do you teach reading for
your discipline?
(Please type your answer in the chat window)
11. Instruction
Develop an overall approach to reading onscreen
texts:
● Build curriculum Around Reading Apprenticeship
Dimensions--Personal, Social, Cognitive,
Knowledge-building, Metacognition
● Make It Personal
● Make It Social
● Surface Mental Process
● Make it Known
Link: http://www.losmedanos.edu/deved/documents/RA-2pg.pdf
12. Instruction
Model to students how find purpose for reading.
If students know their purpose,
they can adjust their behavior
and reading time.
13. Instruction
Help students to cut out the clutter (Remove
distractions)
Teach specific approaches to reading on the Internet
Example: Colorado State University
Link: http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/page.cfm?pageid=651&guideid=33
14. Instruction
Help students construct a reading path for nonlinear
textual environments.
● Assessing the credibility of sources
● Reducing to manageable number of texts
● Determining relevance of texts to goals
(Cho & Afflerbach, 2015)
15. Instruction
Provide a checklist for developing strategic
Internet strategies.
Explore and select Web sources
Interconnect and learn from multiple
sources
Evaluate and critique Web sources
Monitor and adjust your Internet reading.
(Cho & Afflerbach, 2015)
16. Instruction
Use Internet Reciprocal Teaching (Hodgson, 2015):
“Scaffolded Inquiry”
1. Teacher-led Modeling
2. Collaborative modeling
3. Inquiry
17. Instruction
Engage in and encourage mindful practices:
● “Form follows function”
● Quiet and Sustained
● Out of Site(sight) out of Mind
● Honor thy printed text and author
● Offer activities that honor deep reading to counterbalance
the trend in “short reading” online.
● At what cost?
● It’s all about the learning
(Baron, 2015)
18. Library
1. What can we as librarians do to improve student
online reading skills and comprehension?
2. How do we connect what we have learned with
what we already do?
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
19. How do you think academic
libraries can help students
navigate the challenges of
reading online?
(Please type your answer in the chat window)
Library: Question
20. Library: Teaching
● Collaborate with faculty to design targeted instruction
that addresses student barriers to online reading
● Offer more advanced searching & digital resource
evaluation instruction to improve student resource
selection skills
● Introduce note-taking and annotation strategies for
reading digital material
● Help students learn to be mindful when setting up their
physical & digital environments to decrease distraction &
increase self-confidence in reading online
21. Library: Resources & Access
● Circulation: Acquire & check out equipment that supports
online reading
● Collection Development: Consider interface & ease of use
for new material, in addition to subject and content
appropriateness
● Access: Provide mobile hotspots, as well as print and digital
copies of texts
● Collaboration: Work with campus bookstore to provide print
and digital textbook options & to ensure the accessibility of
OER
22. Library: Tutorials & Tools
Develop tutorials for digital reading strategies & tools
Explore best practices & innovations for developing
online reading skills
Investigate new digital annotation tools that increase
online reading comprehension
Introduce software apps to remove distractions from
digital text
23. eLearning: Question
What do you do (if anything)
to make reading online easier
for yourself?
(Please type your answer in the chat window)
26. eLearning: Learning Design
Canvas
Keep it simple
No crazy colors
Use headings, spacing.
Documents (docx, pdf, etc) or
canvas pages?
Can content be annotated?
eTextbooks
/ Materials
Portable / Sharable ?
Can they be annotated?
27. Summary of Ideas
The ‘thing’ being read and the purpose for
reading it will dictate strategies.
● Academic or deep reading online presents challenges
● Reading comprehension requires different strategies
● Distraction is an issue
● Annotation and NoteTaking
● Quality & credibility of material is harder to determine
● The physicality of printed text is still important for many
readers
● Access Issues: Digital v. Print
29. Thank you
Bellingham Technical College Learning Community Project
Members
● Judi Wise, Basic Academic Skills/ESL Faculty
● Traci Taylor, Librarian
● Dawn Hawley, eLearning Instructional Technician/Library
Specialist
● Stoo Sepp, Director of eLearning
● Caren Kongshaug, English/Basic Skills/RA Lead
● Jane Blume, Director, Library & Media Services
teaching.btc.ctc.edu/readingonline
Editor's Notes
Intro - Dawn
Dawn - This diagram shows how our project was formed...
Dawn - pretty much “that woman who reads the slide”
Dawn - I will paraphrase
Dawn - describe briefly our research activities
Dawn - Students randomly selected from various programs
Survey and Various questions about reading preferences
Dawn - we have so far discovered: (What do we know?)
Our review of current literature reveals that comprehension is consistently lower for students who read digital text.
Our Survey & FG research has so far revealed several barriers to successful online reading for students.
What do the students say? Distraction/Environment/Trust, lack of note-taking skill, physicality -
Dawn – link to reading environments was added to webpage (oh note from stoo – I didn’t know what you meant by ‘environments’)
Love it!
Dawn - Or, a review of the research out there……..
Judi
Judi - Develop an overall approach to reading onscreen texts:
Build curriculum around Reading Apprenticeship Dimensions--Personal, Social, Cognitive, Knowledge-building, Metacognition
Make it Personal--Help students see themselves as readers by allowing them to explore their preferences between digital texts and print texts.
Make it Social--Find ways students can explore the benefits and limitations of onscreen reading through group discussion
Surface Strategies--Have students observe and record each other reading a difficult onscreen text. discuss what was done and why.
Make it Known--Teach vocabulary on onscreen devices, tools, etc.
Judi
Model to students how find purpose for reading.
If students know their purpose, they can adjust their behavior and reading time.
Search for information? (Scan)
Remember information? (Study-read/Deep-read)
Get a general idea? (Skim)
Help students to cut out the clutter (Remove distractions)
Remove external distractors (room, etc.)
Remove online distractors (Apps and behaviors--Readability.com, adjust settings on screen)
Use Ad Blockers for online ads
Turn off phone, etc.
Teach specific reading strategies: (http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=33)
Show students how to synthesize online reading into meaningful chunks (Deep read) and scan a web page to focus on what’s important (Scan)
Teach students the value of evaluating hyperlink before you click
Ask students about different domains (.edu, .org, .gov, .com)
Lesson: Draw clear and logical path that reader uses complete and assignment involving online content--map it out
To become responsive and sophisticated readers, Students must construct a reading path that reflects their decisions and strategies over the course of the task. These decisions include assessing credibility of the sources, reducing the numerous possibilities to a manageable number of texts, and determining relevance of texts to goals.
Examine and select hyperlinks to access useful texts.
Build a reading path to achieve reading goals
Compare/contrast info from sources.
Choose which sources and what order
Monitor reading process—plan, reflect on, anticipate options for questioning
Construct critical questions
Checklist
Judi--
Use Internet Reciprocal Teaching (Hodgson, 2015):Judi check reference
Teacher-led Modeling of strategies for online learning. Think Aloud process of active reading. Use checklist to offer beginning support to students.
Collaborative modeling--Group work on larger projects to solve questions based on research.
Inquiry--Students complete larger project based on their own interests.
Judi--
Engage in and encourage mindful practices:
“Form follows function”--Encourage students to use the form that works best for their purpose.
Schedule in the quiet and sustained--Offer opportunities to read without distraction.
Out of Site(Sight) out of mind--Model how not to multi-task when in front of students (not texting in meeting, etc.)
Honor thy printed text and author--Display respect for print and authorship.
Offer activities that honor deep reading to counterbalance the trend in “short reading” online.
At what cost?--Ask questions about the environmental impact of digital versus print texts.
It’s all about the learning--“Don’t abandon learning outcomes for the sake of costs.”
Traci
Traci
Traci
Traci
Traci
Stoo
So much of what we read online is just on websites or blogs? What do you do to make things easier to read online?
Stoo
Explain what clean reading is. Show screenshots. Can’t show due to copyright – had tough time even finding logos.
Stoo
StooTextbooks are great! What about eTextbooks though? Are they:
portable, annotatable?
Building stuff in canvas? - keep it simple
No crazy colors, headings, spacing. Documents (docx, pdf, etc) or canvas pages? whichever is easiest on the eyes, can they be annotated?