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

9. Findings & Applications
1.For Teachers…
2.For Librarians…
3.For eLearning...

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)

24. eLearning: Clean Reading
Browser:
Apps:
Managing:
Evernote Clearly, Reading
List (safari), Print Mode
Readability, Instapaper,
Paper
Send-to, Share-to, Email
(works with the above apps)

25. eLearning: Annotating
Apps:
Research:
Adobe Acrobat, Notability,
and many, many, more
Papers (mac, iOS), Endnote

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

28. teaching.btc.ctc.edu/readingonline
 Slides
 Survey Results
 References

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