Reading Digitally verses in Print

 Amplify has created this amazing podcast. If you are a teacher in any subject, you should be listening! Science of Reading - The Podcast. Today I want to discuss S4-04 Learning to Read Digitally vs in Print: Dr. Lauren Trakhman & Dr. Patricia Alexander.  This podcast goes over the research the professors from the University of Maryland on how effective our reading is digitally verses in print. My class that I am taking now is Digital Leadership. Our focus is on digital resources. Over the past decade, our schools have been offered more digital options than ever before and post-pandemic, we are now much more online than we have ever been before. I am a huge proponent of digital resources and digital text, but after listening to this podcast, I may have to rethink my use. 

The research that Dr. Trakhman and Dr. Alexander performed was to determine if a student comprehended the text at the same level both digitally and print. They did much of their research using college students as their test subjects. They conducted multiple studies over time and found interesting results. For the most part, students felt they read better digitally and preferred that medium, however, their comprehension of the material in print far exceeded their comprehension using the digital format. I was very surprised there was a difference, especially as these college students were on the computer all the time. The studies continued to show that the layout of a page with info graphs and captions, cause digital readers to often skip or scroll past the information. They went on to show that digital readers often read quicker, skimming rather than reading for comprehension. 

They did not say that digital text doesn't have a place in education, but the research does show that learning how to read on a digital platform needs to be explicitly taught. Students should learn how to manipulate the digital text with either a stylus or traditional paper and pencil, if they hope to retain important information. They also discussed that teachers need to be mindful when using digital texts. Alternate digital and print and follow up with great discussions. Use digital texts with a purpose and recognize that most readers will get the gist but will not retain important details. If you know this, then you can teach to support your learners and chose texts for different purposes. 

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast and the others from Amplify. I love learning more about how our brain works and how we can better prepare our students for their next chapter.