When I started the masters program at Regis in August, the first
struggle I faced was figuring out how to best study for the program. Do I print
the slides? How should I take notes? Should I buy the class textbooks? After
some thought, I decided to write notes by hand on a printout of the lecture
material. What surprised me, however, was how many of my classmates were using
their iPads to take notes. I had never seen this before and began to wonder
about the benefits and drawbacks to this method.
One day as I was reading the news, I came across an article that
suggested students who read on paper performed better than students who read on
screens at all grade levels (Barshay, 2019). Other studies prefaced
that when analyzing screens versus paper, many factors come into play such as
the reader, the material, the purpose, and the technology (Jabr, 2013).
However, they found that when reading something that is long, complex, and
requires a lot of attention, a printed medium resulted in higher reading
performance and better memory of the information (Clinton, 2019).
In order
to better understand this phenomenon, studies looked at brain cognition and
function. Some research indicated that modern screens do not adequately
recreate certain tactile experiences which subtly inhibits reading
comprehension (Jabr, 2013). When reading, the human brain constructs a mental
landscape of the text similar to the mental maps we create of terrain
(Liang, Gwo, & Shang, 2012). Studies showed that when trying to
remember a particular piece of written information, people often remember where
in the text it appeared (Rothkopf, 1971). Print had more obvious regions,
including left and right pages, physical corners, and page thickness while most
screens didn’t, potentially contributing to worse comprehension and recall
(Jabr, 2013).
Reading about
some of the downfalls with reading on screens made me think about what that
means for students who are required to take difficult entrance exams like the
LSAT and MCAT electronically. Could the technology be inhibiting some students
from performing their best on these standardized exams?
Citations:
Barshay, J. (2019, August 12). Evidence
increases for reading on paper instead of screens. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/evidence-increases-for-reading-on-paper-instead-of-screens/.
Clinton, V. (2019). Reading from paper compared
to screens: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of Research in
Reading, 42(2), 288-325.
Jabr, F. (2013, April). The Reading Brain in
the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens. Scientific
American
Rothkopf, E. Z. (1971). Incidental memory for
location of information in text. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 10(6), 608-613.
I remember discussing this in class with you earlier this week and think it is a very interesting subject! I know you mentioned that students who read on paper performed better but I was wondering if that also extends to writing on paper versus on an iPad. Since iPads and their usage are fairly new, I was not able to find any studies directly comparing the writing aspect of iPad versus paper use. However, there was a study done on elementary school children that showed using an iPad for writing versus paper requires a different level of touch interactions, including a wider range of "touches" including swiping and clicking compared to writing on paper (Crescenzi, Jewitt, & Price, 2014). This brings up an interesting question, would writing on an iPad use a different part of the brain and therefore enhance learning due to the more tactile nature of it?
ReplyDeleteCrescenzi, L., Jewitt, C., & Price, S. (2014). The role of touch in preschool children's learning using iPad versus paper interaction. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 37(2), 86-95.
Hey Feruth, loved your post! We can all agree on how relevant this is to us and many other students. Using an iPad was completely a new thing for me as well this year. Based on talking to one of the students in this program the year before us, I decided to give into it. I like using the iPad for a number of reasons, but the most important one is that it helps keep me organized with all of the PowerPoints that we go through. Another reason why I love using it is because it is small and portable and I can access all of my materials anytime and anywhere essentially. With that being said, when it comes to reading material I consider myself to be traditional as I have to have a physical copy of the textbook in order for me to be able to comprehend it. So I did order all of the books required beforehand.
ReplyDeleteIn a study published in 2017, a group of researchers compared reading performance between reading on a tablet versus paper and found that there were no significant or reliable differences between the two (Hermena et al., 2017). These results were found to be inconsistent with previous studies suggesting that reading on physical paper is "better" than reading on a tablet. There definitely should be more studies conducted to analyze the effects that digital media used for educational purposes has on users as everyday more people continue to turn to technology for
their needs.
Reference:
Hermena, E. W., Sheen, M., AlJassmi, M., AlFalasi, K., AlMatroushi, M., & Jordan, T. R. (2017). Reading Rate and Comprehension for Text Presented on Tablet and Paper: Evidence from Arabic. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00257
Thanks, Feruth, this was a very interesting read! I have to kindly disagree with some of the conclusions that were drawn from your cited studies however. As Clinton stated, "[her] findings weren’t fair to screens because the screens couldn’t offer everything they could...they were really just a shiny piece of paper” (Clinton, 2019). While it is interesting to look at the differences between simply reading off of an ipad versus a piece of paper, that is not necessarily an accurate representation of what students are using the ipad for. I, for one, enjoy taking notes on my ipad and do very little reading on it. I would be interested to see what newer studies have to say about the tactile differences between writing on paper versus an ipad. While reading is one thing, I think it is not fair to draw arrive at the conclusion that paper is best. I believe that ipads have a lot to offer the academic world and that more research is required before drawing conclusions.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Clinton, V. (2019). Reading from paper compared to screens: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of Research in Reading, 42(2), 288-325.
Hi Feruth,
ReplyDeleteThis topic is so relevant not only to college students but also to parents. I have a cousin who allows her kids to use an iPad to read in addition to playing “educational games”. Is this method not as effective as simply reading books or writing in notebooks? In addition, are these light-emitting e-readers negatively affecting sleep? A study published in 2014 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reported the backlit screen of E-readers can disrupt the circadian timing causing additional health problems (Chang et al., 2014). I’ve been using my iPad to take notes during class all year but I am thinking about switching to paper next semester.
Reference:
Chang, A.-M., Aeschbach, D., Duffy, J. F., & Czeisler, C. A. (2014). Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(4), 1232–1237. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1418490112