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Literature review (ny)

Table of Contents

Perceptually guided scrolling for reading continuous text on small screen devices

Max Melchior

The main problem addressed by Wiping is scrolling, or revealing new content on the screen, as this is highly disruptive to the reading process. Page by page scrolling (rather than line by line) is the best way of decreasing the frequency of scrolling, and therefore essential to high speed reading on small screens, but paging can be confusing.

E-Reading

Karen Coyle (2008) realizes that we are facing a problem that needs to be solved: as the amount of text based information available and continously being produced digitally is "absolutely stunning", we still haven't discovered the most optimal way of reading these. The reading experience is ....

What is clear, however, is that we need a solution to the problem of reading electronic texts. The amount of material produced in electronic formats each day is absolutely stunning.

We are collecting materials in electronic format and digitizing books without having a clear idea of how they will be used.

If most of us would not read an article on the screen, clearly book-length texts are far too long for reading on the computer screen.

Digitized books vs. ebooks

There is a fundamental difference between two predominant forms of electronic books, what Coyle calls the digital text and the digitized book. These are analogous to respectively the electronic pages and virtual pages as described in the typography chapter.

While there are differences in how these books are produced, the experience of reading the photographically digitized text is similar, if not identical to the virtual page (given a perfect artifact-free scan of the document, complete with proper OCR to enable search functionalities in the photocopy).

In today's academic libraries, there are two predominant forms of electronic books: books that are digital texts, such as those available from publishers for online access, and scans or digital photographs of print books, such as those that are being digitized in library projects.

The photographically digitized book is poorly suited, however, to being rendered on a screen for reading. To begin with, there is no reflowing of the text to accommodate the differences in viewing areas between different devices.

Reader software that emulates a book as closely as possible.

With all of these digitized formates, the clarity of the text displays is far from the crisp ink-on-paper experience, and actual reading of tet is considerably more difficult.

Important: Visual clue of where one is in the text.

Many e-book applications have implemented these features in their viewing software.

PORTABILITY!

Form factor! Must not require wires or other physically annoying characteristics.

To read for enjoyment, and to read for sustained periods of time, we want to be comfortably seated, feet up, and uninterrupted.

Being book-like is not enough, however. We (rightfully) expect new technology to give us more than the old technology it is replacing. E-books can be linked to dictionaries, or can launch Web searches. They can interact with citation software. They can include sounds and animation. Most e-books today do not, however, go beyond being a simple electronic version of the printed book. That just may not be enough.

She quotes Jakob Nielsen:

The basic problem is that the book is too strong a metaphor: it tends to lead designers and writers astray. Electronic text should be based on interaction, hypertext linking, navigation, search, and connections to online services and continuous updates. These new-media capabilities allow for much more powerful user experiences than a linear flow of text. Linear text may have ruled the world since the Egyptians learned to produce arbitrarily long scrolls of papyrus, but it's time to end this tradition. Nobody has time to read long reports any more: information must be dynamic and under direct control of the reader, not the author.

Reading in A Digital Age: e-Books Are Students Ready For This Learning Object?

Veldig bra og relevant litteraturstudie!

Abstract

E-Books are a type of e-content based learning object whose benefits may include: hyper linking, nonlinearity, data density, customizability, greater distribution, low costs, search ability, and other multimedia features (Shiratuddin, Hassan, & Landoni, 2003). Originally introduced in the late 1990’s, the growth of e-books has been sluggish. Midgley reported (as cited in Wilson, 2003) that while proponents believe that e-books will come to change the way we understand reading and represent the future of reading in this digital age, critics explain that reading on a screen is an unpleasant experience that has, and will continue to, stymie the growth of e-books (Weeks, 2002). Concurrently, Prensky (2001) reports that the new generation of students entering higher education, the “Millennials”, are fascinated by new technologies and considers it as a natural part of their environment. This paper represents the findings of students’ reported experiences and perceptions of e-books at a historically Black university

Notes

William Endhoven of iRex Technologies said that despite the high number of hours individuals spend in front of computer screens, people still do not want to read at length on their computer. He explained that when faced with more than three or four pages most people would choose to print. As a result, he suggested that e-books need to develop their own identities.

and while handheld devices make e-books highly portable, issues of screen size, battery life, readability, slow page turning, and compatibility between devices has persisted (Abbott & Kelly, 2004).

A survey conducted by the electronic publisher Versaware (as cited in Rogers, 2001) claimed that 87% of the students polled favored e-books of traditional print volumes. In contrast, a number of studies have shown that the majority of college students are not accepting of e-books (Mash, 2003; Rogers & Roncevic, 2002).

Link

From Scroll... to Codex... and Back Again

The aim of this paper is to examine the use of the scroll metaphor in the electronic context and to explor new ways of using computing capabilities to convert ths extremely basic linear narrative device into an effective an effective nativgation tool.

Describes how typography has evolved from the scroll, to the codex and back to the scroll metaphor again.

Asks the user .. points out that with the scroll metaphor as implemented on computer screens, the user has more control over the controls, letting the users themselves use their preferred navigation methods - one entire page, or just one line at a time.

Some applications updates the UI as the user scroll, making it possible to glance and skim the text as it is scrolled in the same way as one would do with a book.

Discusses defferent application approaches, and asks how to maximize the potential of the scroll metaphor.

Praises the non-linearity made possible with the codex (indexes, page numbers etc.), and praises how hypertext gives the scroll metaphor used in traditional web pages non-linearity.

Praises how the forced breaks in paginated text can be used as narrative device.

Praises the flowing nature of scrolling text.

... gradually revealing and unfolding one continous story of text, reducing large quantities of information into manageable chunks and presenting only immediately required information at a given time.

It would seem [...] scroling is gaining favour.

No attempt to see if horizontal scrolling is more suitable fo rthe horizontal format monitors in use at present.

Jacob Nielsen says no to horizontal scrolling!

Warns us about over use of metaphors. Do not have emulated page turning, sound effects.

Goes on talking about "extra" featurs, such as digital post-its and dog-ear marking of pages (present in the Adobe PFD Reader). Annotation, bookmarking.

Writes of how reading is changing.

Demand for E-books in an Academic Library

Ellen Safley (2006)

Link

Brown (2001) suggested that learners using digital text are not reading sequentially but are searching, scanning, selecting, cutting, and pasting in segments. Other researchers have suggested that Internet use and scanning texts online are changing how students conduct research.

How physical text layout affects reading from screen

In her article, Mary C. Dyson, ... how the layout of text, down to very specific variables affect the reading of content from screen. The main points of interest studied are line length, use of columns, the window size, interlinear spacing and typographic layout in general. What is generally thought is that most variables are impossible to study individually, as they are often interdependent. For instance, the number of characters per line is acutely influenced by the line length and vice versa.

  • Line length
    • Character density
    • Type size
    • Comparing character density and type size
    • Physical length and character density (number of character per line)
    • Characters per line
    • Characters per line and margins
    • Comprehension of characters per line
    • Subjective judgements of characters per line
  • Columns
    • One vs. two columns
    • One vs. three columns
    • Subjective judgements
  • Window size
    • Few lines vs. 20 lines per screen
    • 20 vs. 40 lines per screen
    • 20 vs. 60 lines per screen
    • 23 vs. 60 lines per screen
    • 15, 25, 35 lines per screen
    • Other tasks
    • Subjective judgements
  • Interlinear spacing
    • Single vs. double spacing
    • Sinlge vs. double spacing and lines per screen
  • Typographic layout

Over the course of hundreds of years of studying the physical book in use, and he development of the typography trade, there has been a set of best practices on how to make a text legible and aestetically pleasing.

What is generally throught is that these guidelines, while not completely incompatible with the screen, they are not translatable wholesale. One of the ... that has been identified is the form factor of the screen, and how it is used. First, a normal computer screen is horisontally oriented (it is wider than it is tall), while a physical book is vertically oriented (it is taller than it is wide). Furthermore, a reader typically sits further away from the text when read on screen than the user would if read physically.

In a study of the use of digital texts read on a traditional (horisontal) computer screen, students discovered the possibility to rotate the text (and the computer), so that the text could be read with the traditional aspect ratio. (hvilken artikkel var dette?)

Threre has been identified two ways to study the effect of typographic variables:

  • Repacing one confounding variable with another, depending on whether variables are defined as a single dimansion or a higher order relationship.
  • Start by identifying the effect of individual typographic variables and then to test whether the effect of one variable depends on another using systematic replications.

The general finds of the article is a set of general guidelines and advice on how to typeset a text to maximise the general readabiliy of digital texts.

There is however a problem with the studies that Dyson cites, namely their relative age. Computers, including screen display technology has evolved immensly since the introduction of the home computer, producing high resolution, high contrast, portable screens only available in science fiction at time of the writing of the articles. The problems and issues that the articles are noting might not exist anymore, and the ....

The general problem of low resolution screens The popularity of tablet computer devices, devices that are held in the , are rapidly rising

Further, as the screen technology continues to evolve at rapid speeds, more research is is needed.

Further studies are needed to explore the interactions between characters per line and eye movements, scrolling movements, reading patterns and familiarity with formats.

Electronic documents enable multiple navigation routes and different ways of reading, which produce a set of research questions for reading from screen that do not have a parallel in reading print.

Designing Web-Based Instruction: A Research Review on Color Typography, Layout, and Screen Density

Gercai discusses in his paper how one can design digital texts to enhance student performance, based on research from 30 published referenced published between 1992 and 2002. The main areas of interest in the study in the four mentioned in the title: color, typography, spatial layout and screen density and how they affect the

Geraci finds a large sample of data on how to create web based texts that What is apparent is that many of the recommendations and best practices are in many cases contradictory. For instande, Geraci cites ... that recommends the use of serif fonts for decorative headlines and sans-serif fonts for body text a source that recommends the use of legible serif fonts for body text and sans-serif fonts for headlines – in other words: two completely incompatible views.

The main outcomes of the study is a set of seven matrices that present and organises the most relevant recommendations for the key areas discussed, as well as an annotated bibliography of 12 resouces that he feels provides insight and guidance for instructors who creates Web-based instructions.

The references cited by Geraci has the same weakness as the ones cited by Dyson – they are relatively old. While Geraci has taken great care in choosing sources ... , by the time of t his study, the oldest article is more than twenty years old.

The effects of reading speed and reading paterns on the understanding of text read from screen

Dyson and Haselgrove explores the effect of reading speed on comprehension on finds that faster speeds in general results in a decline in the level of comprehension compared with reading at a normal speed. They do however find that the general gist, that is to say the general idea and information, of the content, is retained regardless of reading speed. Higher reading speeds does lead to greater difficulties in remembering precice wording.

The more precice the content, the greater the difficulty in remembering them.

Of great interest to this study is their find that readers who spend longer time pausing between scrolling, maximising the time that the text is stationary, comprehend more.

Another interesing find is that flexibility of display formats and choice of reading patterns can be a detriment to efficient reading. Why this is is not answered in any way in the article, but is hypothetized to be due ...

Reading behavoius in the digital environment: Changes in reading behaviour over the past ten years

Liu points in his paper to the fact that among those questioned most electronic texts are printed and consumed physical and hypothesises about the reasons for why this is. The two main reasons are form factor and that "in-depth reading" usually involves annotation and highlighting, something that (current) technology is unable to provide adequate emulation of.

With the growing amount of digital information available and the increasing amount of time that people spend reading electronic media, the digital environment has begun to affect people’s reading behavior.

Liu points to a transformative shift in reading where

  • interactivity
  • non-linearity
  • immediacy of accessing information
  • convergence of text and images, audio and video

[...] electronic media tend to be more useful for searching, while paper-based media are preferred for actual consumption of information

He points to the fact that reading is still the most efficient mean to communicate words, and that a more complex society will demand increased rather than decreased reading. In other words,

Ziu finds that over 80% of the respondents in the study always or frequently print electronic documents for reading, and that may prefer printed books to ebooks.

He mentioned the form factor of the text as one of the reasons why texts are preferred read physically by noting that the tradition of holding a book in the gand while reading can partially explain why those views of replacing printed documents with electronic media are overly optimistic, as it is much easier to read something that is held in the hand than something that ust lies on a table.

In-depth reading

  • Usually involves annotating and highlighting

Interessante sitater

The advent of digital media and the growing collection of digital documents have had a profound impact on reading. It was argued that the development of digital libraries “is participating a general societal trend toward shallower, more fragmented, and less concentrated reading” (Levy, 1997).

Lower resolution on a computer monitor is one of the major factors that people print out documents (especially lengthy documents) for reading (Ramirez, 2003)

McKnight (1997) argues that the recent trend in mounting electronic documents in Adobe’s PDF format also discourages screen reading and encourages printing.

Flipping and scanning (a reading pattern associated with printed documents) is not only a means for locating information in a document, but also a means to get a sense of the whole text. Scrolling on a computer screen does not support this mode of reading and information processing. Readers tend to establish a visual memory for the location of items on a page and within a document. Scrolling weakens this relationship (Olsen, 1994). There is a historical analogy of this reading pattern.

Another participant reports that younger people do not have patience to read every word. They merely skim and look for needed information while reading

Print vs.electronic resources: A study of user perceptions, preferences, and use

Liu starts out by listing research that finds that users is starting to prefer electronic information to physical formats.

Ease of access, ease of printing, and ease of sharing are among the most commonly cited reasons for preferring electronic journals.

Also, what makes people prefer physical formats

Lenares (1999) finds that convenience, timeliness, and the ability to search text are the most important factors influencing faculty's choice of electronic over print materials. On the other hand, the ability to browse, portability, physical com- fort, and convenience are the most important characteristics leading them to choose print over electronic resources

...print material is user friendly.

Reading print materials is less distracting

Points to the students supplementing their online research with reasearch on traditional libraries to confirm the information found in digital libraries. There seems to be a perceived, intrisic authority in a printed book/document.

Concludes with that

Users desire a hybrid information environment in which online information does not supplant information in print but adds new access opportunities for users to choose.

It should also be noted that an entire generation is growing up with new technology and is likely to have different expectations and preferences toward the choice of digital libraries and traditional libraries.

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation.

  • Linear exposition. PDF files are typically converted from documents that were intended for print, so the authors wouldn't have followed the guidelines for Web writing. The result? A long text that takes up many screens and is unpleasant and boring to read.

  • Jarring user experience. PDF lives in its own environment with different commands and menus. Even simple things like printing or saving documents are difficult because standard browser commands don't work.

  • Crashes and software problems. While not as bad as in the past, you're still more likely to crash users' browsers or computers if you serve them a PDF file rather than an HTML page.

  • Breaks flow. You have to wait for the special reader to start before you can see the content. Also, PDF files often take longer time to download because they tend to be stuffed with more fluff than plain Web pages.

  • Orphaned location. Because the PDF file is not a Web page, it doesn't show your standard navigation bars. Typically, users can't even find a simple way to return to your site's homepage.

  • Content blob. Most PDF files are immense content chunks with no internal navigation. They also lack a decent search, aside from the extremely primitive ability to jump to a text string's next literal match. If the user's question is answered on page 75, there's close to zero probability that he or she will locate it.

  • Text fits the printed page, not a computer screen. PDF layouts are often optimized for a sheet of paper, which rarely matches the size of the user's browser window. Bye-bye smooth scrolling. Hello tiny fonts.

Link

Digital reading spaces: How expert readers handle books, the Web and electronic papers

While hypertext theorists celebrate a new–won freedom for readers (and writers), others claim that the current shaping of the Web induces a new form of constraint — a psychological urge to click; a kind of uneasy wariness of mind and index finger. Asserting that different kinds of materiality influence our reading, Anne Mangen (2008) examines the impact of the intangibility and volatility of digital text on the reading process, which she claims is dominated by shallow forms of reading, such as scanning and skimming. Taking as a basis Merleau–Ponty’s phenomenological concept of humans as bodies–in–the–world and Thorngate’s psychological theories of attention, Mangen argues the near impossibility of getting immersed in hypertext or online reading in the same way we get lost in a book. Most Web sites provide an abundance of attention–switching possibilities and promise new stimuli in the form of links, pictures and videos. As a rule, then, when we have options to easily rekindle our attention through outside stimuli, we are psychobiologically inclined to resort to these options. It requires less mental energy to click the mouse and rekindle our attention than to try to resist distractions by attempting to keep on structuring consciousness from within, and thus continue reading (Mangen, 2008). Furthermore, in front of the computer screen — and especially online — we are relentlessly tuned in to change. We have learned to expect something to happen and are thus doubly compelled by an urge to click.

These projects do not tell us what scholars eventually do with downloaded papers and articles. Many are no doubt forgotten, but some are obviously read. According to Liu (2005), research confirms the general belief that a majority of users often print out electronic documents for reading, and that the traditional habit of highlighting and annotating text has not migrated to the digital environment. The latter was also a major finding in the studies of Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper (1997; 2002; O’Hara and Sellen, 1997) who in an extensive research project studied paper and computers and their different uses in various organisations.

With regard to the first challenge of continuous reading, it seems clear that the stationary displays of PCs and laptops are unfit for immersive imaginary reading.

Tips til hvordan leser-software burde være

First of all, Web browsers should be used for what they are good at — presenting overviews and accessing information through links and search functions. For the rest, browsers should be a deliverer of adapted applications in a modular design and a layered sandwich structure. In a layered structure, Web browsers may be the interface for multimodal presentations and a range of analytic, creative and collaborative tools and social networking facilities. However, as soon as long–form texts are presented and sustained reading is required users of the Web should be able to apply dedicated reading software. This software should ensure that distracting elements of browsers and operating systems are eliminated, along with unnecessary links and graphics. Drawing on typographical knowledge, in reading applications the focus should be on reading, preferably based on a two–layer system with one “read–mode” for continuous reading, stripped of everything unnecessary, and one “study–mode” for discontinuous reading, equipped with aids for navigation, highlighting and annotation. Dedicated reading software should enable links to much–used reading resources, such as dictionaries and encyclopaedias, and the “study–mode” should easily combine with creative applications, such as word processors, for effortless transfer of notes, citations and references.

Artikelen peker og på at dedikerte lese-tablets, spesielt de basert på e-ink er veien å gå.

E-book acceptance: what will make users read on screen?

Paul Mercieca (?)

Paul Mercieca (?) has in his paper E-book acceptance: what will make users read on screen? noticed that students often ... and asks the questions

What has changed – is the printer the new photocopier?

In general, e-book content tends to be a digital republication of an original print-based book.

This seems to be the case even today

All memmbers of the focus group indicated that they would purchase the printed textbook (if given the choice between a printed and a digital copy)

They would however buy it if it were priced at approximately one third of the printed counterpart.

Content enhancement

What would change this opinio would be if there were perceived advantages to the use of the digital text.

Hvorfor er folk så averterte når det kommer til å lese tekster digitalt?

These preliminary findings suggest a reluctance to move to digital textbooks unless the digital files provide incentives through better or easier access to the content itself.

Weaving the literacy Web: Changes in reading from page to screen

Should I teach different reading strategies in the computer-based classroom? If so, what different strategies are required?

While the paper is more focused on hypertext on the Internet, with links and images, some lessons can be derived from it.

Books are read more slowly than texts on the web, where text are usually skimmed for useful information.

Web pages uses images, which can be used to make the text more "alive" and interesting. Images can however be distractive.

Books are perceived as having an intrisic authority.

As a consequence of skimming the text rather than reading it throroghly:

"we may be familiar with much but understand little" (Birkerts (1994), Stoll (1995))

Delivers a set of guidelines on how to teach "web reading"

Strategies for teaching Web reading

  • Use the "snatch-and-grab" reading technique
  • Focus on refining key-word searches
  • Provide clear search guidelines
  • Use the "chunking technique"
  • Develop teaching mechanisms to overcome frustration with technology
  • Provide short.cut lists to sites or search engines
  • Limit links
  • Evaluate nontextual features (images, graphics)

Sutherland-Smith summarizes her paper

The Internet does not represent an alternative "better than books"; it signifies an option "different from books".

Mobility in Collaboration

While researching mobility in collaborative activities, Luff and Heath found that the computer can be

Here, while researching a physical record can be placed on the table between the patient and the physician Traditional computers...

physical separation of the area where text is entered from where it is seen.

position the record so as to invite the patient to view the materials.s

A workstation clutteres the desk.

The system is indeed part of the furniture, and as part of the furniture it demands an orientation from the participants, rather than allowing the participants themselves the ability to ongoingly configure the artefact with regard to the shifing demands of the activity.

Can the distinct form factor of the tablet computer be an analogue to the physical record?

Note to self: Er litt tynn på det jeg ville finne. Jeg veit jeg har lest et sted at laptoper, etc. skaper et fysisk skille mellom elev og lærer – noe som gjør det å nevne tablets i denne sammenhengen greit å gjøre.

Reading in examination-type situations: the effects of text layout on performance

Lonsdale, dyson, Reynolds (2006)

The results are clear in showing that different text layouts lead to differences in performance

NOTE TO SELF: Bruke denne artikkelens guidlelines for å lage en tekst

Digital natives, Digital Immigrants

Marc Prensky (2001)

Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work.

Children raised with the computer “think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.”

(WilliamD.Winn,DirectoroftheLearningCenter,HumanInterfaceTechnologyLaboratory, University of Washington, quoted in Moore, Inferential Focus Briefing (see 22).)

One key area that appears to have been affected is reflection. Reflection is what enables us, according to many theorists, to generalize, as we create “mental models” from our experience. It is, in many ways, the process of “learning from experience.” In our twitch-speed world, there is less and less time and opportunity for reflection, and this development concerns many people. One of the most interesting challenges and opportunities in teaching Digital Natives is to figure out and invent ways to include reflection and critical thinking in the learning (either built into the instruction or through a process of instructor-led debriefing) but still do it in the Digital Native language. We can and must do more in this area.

Mindre interesante artikler

eBooks and Memory: Down the Rabbit hole?

For a memory to persist, the incoming information must be thoroughly and deeply processed. This accomplished by attending to the information and associating it meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well-established in memory.

...that with the evolved form of text that young people are growing up with today with the web ...

  • Audio and video formats (multimodality)
  • Non-sequential reading
  • New forms of annotation
  • Seamless collaboration
  • Standardized containers

Elephant in the room: cognitive overload.

Reflection: Turning experience into learning

D Boud (1985)

Tror ikke det er mer enn en definisjon på reflection her.

Are electronic books effective in teaching young children reading and comprehension?

Grant explores the effectiveness of electronic books

Since technology is increasingly integrated into the curriculum, it is important to question whether this tool can be used to teach reading and increase reading comprehension..

Building Books with CSS3

Nellie McKesson June 2012

SUS - A quick and dirty usability scale

Bonus Chapter 1: Apple skryter av hvor godt de gjør det i utdanningssektoren

Apple reports that

{% youtube DSVCg1dZLo0 %}

There are now 2500 classrooms in the US with iBooks textbooks. We really believe in this. And we saw it early on. Earlier this year we introduced iBooks author to create textbooks. And iBooks textbooks are now available for 80% of the US high school curriculum.

The iPad has been a real game changer in Education. No technology has impaced the way teachers teach and students learn more quickly and more profoundly. With iPad, the possibilities are endless. (Dr. James Ponce, Superintendent, McAllen ISD, Texas)

Bonus Chapter 2: Trond Kjetil formulererer en helheltlig tekst med det han husker fra ulike artikler

While one often thinks that striving for aestetically and legible texts , there are studies that implies that texts that are hard to read leads to better retention of the content.

This is consistent with studies showing that ...

Some studies show that while the remembering of the general gist of a text is generally unaffected by the reading speed, specific details are retained better when reading at ...

Tablet computer devices

These devices are hand held, rotatable

Compared with traditional computer displays, they are capable of displaing texts in high resolutions, and can be used in both horisontal and vertical positions, and thus have some

They are held closer to the face than a user would normally use a traditional computer screen ... all this making them able to emulate the traditional book in a ...

One is thus able to leverage the advantanges of traditional text books (portability, ...) and multimedia computers (multi-modality, ease-of-access).

While this study is not intended to identify the use of such devices in education, it is important to keep in mind that the form factor allowed by these can have an impact as well (as in being more or less suitable for a text produced by the means done in this study).

Authority

Books are viewed as more authoritative thantexts found on the internet.

In-depth reading

Involves annotation and highlighting, something that is a whole lot easier to perform on physical paper than on digital documents.

Leseliste

Reading revolutions: Online digital text and implications for reading in academe

Barry W. Cull

While the Internet is a text–saturated world, reading online screens tends to be significantly different from reading printed text. This review essay examines literature from a variety of disciplines on the technological, social, behavioural, and neuroscientific impacts that the Internet is having on the practice of reading. A particular focus is given to the reading behaviour of emerging university students, especially within Canada and the United States. A brief overview is provided of the recent transformation of academic libraries into providers of online digital text in addition to printed books and other materials, before looking at research on college students’ preferences for print and digital text, and the cognitive neuroscience of reading on screen.

Link

Student preferences for reading print vs. digital text While university students operate in a world immersed in digital text, they have not simultaneously abandoned print. It is not true, as Steve Jobs stated and as Nicholas Carr implied, that they like the iPad because they don’t read. In fact, for their university studies, students prefer to read on paper, although they also want the convenience of online digital text. Liu has found that graduate academic library users like the access provided by online electronic resources, but prefer to print the electronic documents in order to read them (Z. Liu, 2006). In a study of students at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), the majority of students preferred print, and 63 percent reported that they could bear reading a document on a computer screen for no more than one hour (Ramírez Leyva, 2003). When it comes to course textbooks, a marked student preference for paper over e–books has recently been found (Woody, 2010).

Meanwhile, in a recent survey of students at a university in China, an interesting gender imbalance was found in the paper/electronic preference: 73 percent of the female students prefer print, while only 51 percent of male students prefer print (Z. Liu and Huang, 2008). More research will be needed in this area as emerging members of the “Google generation” — students born since 1993 when graphical Web browsing first appeared — go through the post–secondary education system.

It has also been found that scrolling on a screen requires more mental workload than reading Web sites that do not require scrolling (Wästlund, et al., 2008).

This online multitasking and lack of cognitive focus is not an effective way to learn. Evidence suggests that multitaskers find cognitive focus difficult, that it takes longer to do two tasks simultaneously than it does to complete the same tasks one after the other, and that knowledge gained in dual–task situations can be applied less flexibly in new situations (Ophir, et al., 2009; Rubinstein, et al., 2001; Foerde, et al., 2006).

Early research found that comprehension levels were lower on screen, however in more recent years the comprehension gap between reading on a screen versus on paper has been decreasing.

The legibility of screen formats: Are three columns better than one?

Betalartikler som kan se litt interessante ut

Reading from paper versus screens: A critical review of the empirical literature.

The advent of widespread computer use in general and increasing developments in the domain of hypertext in particular have increased awareness of the issue of reading electronic text. To date the literature has been dominated by reference to work on overcoming speed deficits resulting from poor image quality but an emerging literature reveals a more complex set of variables at work. The present review considers the differences between the media in terms of outcomes and processes of reading and concludes that single variable explanations are insufficient to capture the range of issues involved in reading from screens.

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Beyond print: reading digitally

The development of reader devices and improvement of screen technology have made reading on screens less cumbersome. Our acts of reading are not univocal, as we read in many different ways with many different goals in mind. Reader software can provide different levels of navigation support for the manipulation of digital text, presenting capabilities for analytic reading not available in the print-on-paper reading experience and compensating for our lack of orientation and feeling of omnipotent dominance of text. The parameters of e-text reading and the issues of access remain central to readers and researchers, whether the electronic text is designed and packaged as an “e-book” for portable reading devices, or resides on a server for distribution to library terminals to be downloaded to desktop PCs, laptops or tablet PCs. The power and functionality of reading software – note-taking, highlighting and indexing capabilities, robust open searching across databases – are ultimately linked to open access issues: interoperability, text standards, and digital rights management. These remain key questions for libraries, publishers and researchers.

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