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My friend Joanne was packing her youngest child off to college this month and wrestling with a modern dilemma: Is it better to buy textbooks in digital form or old-fashioned print? One of her son's professors was recommending an online text for a business course: lighter, always accessible and seriously cheaper ($88 vs. $176 for a 164-page book). But Joanne's instinct was that her son would "learn better" from a printed volume, free of online distractions, and with pages he could dog-ear, peruse in any order, and inscribe with marginal notes. Her son was inclined to agree.

Many of us book lovers cherish the tactile qualities of print, but some of this preference is emotional or nostalgic. Do reading and note-taking on paper offer any measurable advantages for learning? Given the high cost of hard-backed textbooks, is it wiser to save the money and the back strain by going digital?

You might think that, decades into the digital revolution, we would have a clear answer to this question. Wrong. Earlier this year educational psychologist Patricia Alexander, a literacy scholar at the University of Maryland, published a thorough review of recent research on the topic. She was "shocked," she says, to find that out of 878 potentially relevant studies published between 1992 and 2017, only 36 directly compared reading in digital and in print and measured learning in a reliable way. (Many of the other studies zoomed in on aspects of e-reading, such as eye movements or the merits of different kinds of screens.)

Aside from pointing up a blatant need for more research, Alexander's review, co-authored with doctoral student Lauren Singer and appearing in Review of Educational Research, affirmed at least one practical finding: if you are reading something lengthy - more than 500 words or more than a page of the book or screen - your comprehension will likely take a hit if you're using a digital device. The finding was supported by numerous studies and held true for students in college, high school and grade school.

Research suggests that the explanation is at least partly the greater physical and mental demands of reading on a screen: the nuisance of scrolling, and the tiresome glare and flicker of some devices. There may be differences in the concentration we bring to a digital environment, too, where we are accustomed to browsing and multitasking. And some researchers have observed that working your way through a print volume leaves spatial impressions that stick in your mind (for instance, the lingering memory of where a certain passage or diagram appeared in a book).

'They assume that because they were going faster [reading digitally], they understood it better. It's an illusion.' Patricia Alexander, University of Maryland literacy scholar

Alexander and Singer have done their own studies of the digital versus print question. In a 2016 experiment they asked 90 undergraduates to read short informational texts (about 450 words) on a computer and in print. Due to the length, no scrolling was required, but there still was a difference in how much they absorbed. The students performed equally well in describing the main idea of the passages no matter the medium, but when asked to list additional key points and recall further details, the print readers had the edge.

Curiously, the students themselves were unaware of this advantage. In fact, after answering comprehension questions, 69% said they believed they had performed better after reading on a computer. Researchers call this failure of insight poor "calibration."

The point of such research, as Alexander herself notes, is not to anoint a winner in a contest between digital and print. We all swim in a sea of electronic information and there's no turning back the tide.

"The core question," Alexander said in an interview, is "when is a reader best served by a particular medium. And what kind of readers? What age? What kind of text are we talking about? All of those elements matter a great deal."

On top of that, we all could do with a lot more self-awareness about how we learn from reading.

For example, a big reason that students in the study thought they learned better from digital text is that they moved more quickly in that medium. Research by Alexander and others has confirmed this faster pace. "They assume that because they were going faster, they understood it better," Alexander observes. "It's an illusion."

If students become aware of this illusion, they can make better choices. Just as they might decide to turn off social media alerts while studying an online textbook, they might want to consciously slow themselves down when reading for deep meaning. On the other hand, when reading for pleasure or surface information, they can let 'er rip.

Digital text makes it easy for students to copy and paste key passages into a document for further study, but there is little research on how this compares with taking notes by hand.

"We study things like highlighting and underlining," Alexander says, "but those kind of motor responses have never been of highest value in terms of text-processing strategies" - whether done with a cursor or a marker. The studying strategy with "the greatest power," she adds, involves deeply questioning the text - asking yourself if you agree with the author, and why or why not.

Dutch scholar Joost Kircz points out that these are still early days for digital reading, and new and better formats will continue to emerge. In his view, the linear format of a traditional book is well suited for narratives but not necessarily ideal for academic texts or scientific papers.

"In narrative prose fiction, the author strictly determines the reading path," he and co-author August Hans Den Boef write in The Unbound Book, a collection of essays about the future of reading. "But in a digital environment we can easily enable a plurality of reading paths in educational and scholarly texts."

In addition to the hyperlinks, video and audio that currently enhance many digital texts, Kircz would like to see innovations such as multiple types of hyperlinks, perhaps in a rainbow of colors that denote specific purposes (annotation, elaboration, contrary views, media, etc.). He also imagines digital books that could enable a variety of paths through a body of work. Not all information is linear or even layered, he told me: "There's a lot of information that's spherical. You cannot stack it up. The question is to what extent can we mimic human understanding?"

While we await those future digital products, students deciding what school books to buy this fall would do well to ask themselves just what they hope to get from the text. As Alexander notes, "If I'm only trying to learn something that's going to be covered on a test and the test is shallow in nature, then [digital] is just fine." If, on the other hand, you hope to dive in deeply and gather imperishable pearls, spring for the book.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, the nonprofit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our newsletter.
A Textbook Dilemma: Digital or Paper?

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My friend Joanne was packing her youngest child off to college this month and wrestling with a modern dilemma: Is it better to buy textbooks in digital form or old-fashioned print? One of her son's professors was recommending an online text for a business course: lighter, always accessible and seriously cheaper ($88 vs.

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Should Tablets Replace Textbooks in K-12 Schools?

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Should Tablets Replace Textbooks in K-12 Schools?

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This site was archived on Nov. 28, 2022. A reconsideration of the topic on this site is possible in the future.

Textbook publishing in the United States is an $11 billion industry, with five companies - Cengage Learning, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, and Scholastic - capturing about 80% of this market. Tablets are an $18 billion industry with 53% of US adults, 81% of US children aged eight to 17, and 42% of US children aged under eight, owning a tablet. As tablets have become more prevalent, a new debate has formed over whether K-12 school districts should switch from print textbooks to digital textbooks on tablets and e-readers.

Proponents of tablets say that they are supported by most teachers and students, are much lighter than print textbooks, and improve standardized test scores. They say tablets can hold hundreds of textbooks, save the environment by lowering the amount of printing, increase student interactivity and creativity, and that digital textbooks are cheaper than print textbooks.

Opponents of tablets say that they are expensive, too distracting for students, easy to break, and costly/time-consuming to fix. They say that tablets contribute to eyestrain, headaches, and blurred vision, increase the excuses available for students not doing their homework, require costly Wi-Fi networks, and become quickly outdated as new technologies emerge. Read more background ...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 4

E-textbooks on tablets cost less than print textbooks.

According to the School Library Journal, the average price of a K-12 print textbook is approximately $70 compared with $45-$55 for a 6-year subscription to a digital textbook. E-textbook prices continue to drop with VitalSource reporting, on average, a 31% drop in price between 2016 and 2018. Tablet prices also continue to drop, making them increasingly affordable. Tablets cost on average $489 in 2011 compared with $299 in 2018.
Read More

Pro 6

Tablets contain many technological features that cannot be found in print textbooks.

Tablets give users the ability to highlight and edit text and write notes without ruining a textbook for the next user. Tablets have a search function, a backlighting option to read in low light, and a built-in dictionary. Interactive diagrams and videos increase student creativity, motivation, attentiveness, and engagement with classroom materials.
Read More

Pro 7

Print textbooks are heavy and cause injuries, while a tablet only weighs 1-2 pounds.

Pediatricians and chiropractors recommend that students carry less than 15% of their body weight in a backpack, but the combined average weight of textbooks in History, Mathematics, Science, and Reading/Language Arts exceeds this percentage at nearly all grade levels from 1-12. According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, during the 2011-12 school year more than 13,700 kids, aged 5 to 18, were treated for backpack-related injuries. The rate dropped to 6,300 in 2016 - a 54% decrease - thanks in part to the increasing use of tablets.
Read More

Con 4

People who read print text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read digital text.

The brain interprets printed and digital text in different ways, and people generally read digital text 20-30% slower than print. According to Pulitzer Prize winning technology writer Nicholas Carr, peer-reviewed studies show that reading hyper-linked text may increase the brain's "cognitive load," lowering the ability to process, store, and retain information, or "translate the new material into conceptual knowledge." In addition, students who type lecture notes instead of write their notes by hand tended to write more, process less, and perform worse on recall tests.
Read More

Con 6

Manufacturing tablets is environmentally destructive and dangerous to human health.

According to the New York Times, the "adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those from making a single book." One tablet requires the extraction of 33 pounds of minerals, 79 gallons of water, and 100 kilowatt hours of fossil fuels resulting in 66 pounds of carbon dioxide. Print books produce 100 times fewer greenhouse gases. Two gallons of water are required to make the pulp slurry that is pressed and heat-dried to make paper, and only two kilowatt hours are required to form and dry the sheets of paper.
Read More

5. During the 2011-12 school year more than 13,700 US children, aged 5 to 18, were treated in hospitals and doctors' offices for backpack-related injuries (5,000 in emergency rooms) such as contusions, sprains, fractures, and strains to the back and shoulders; in 2016, the number had dropped to 6,300 - a 54% decrease - thanks in part to the increasing use of tablets.

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Tablets vs. Textbooks - 15 Pros and Cons

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Proponents say tablets help students learn more material faster. Opponents say tablets are too distracting and easy to break.

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Why Digital Reading Is No Substitute for Print

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Why Digital Reading Is No Substitute for Print

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Do students learn as much when they read digitally as they do in print?

For both parents and teachers, knowing whether computer-based media are improving or compromising education is a question of concern. With the surge in popularity of e-books, online learning and open educational resources, investigators have been trying to determine whether students do as well when reading an assigned text on a digital screen as on paper.

The answer to the question, however, needs far more than a yes-no response.

Reading in print versus digitally

In my research, I have compared the ways in which we read in print and onscreen. Between 2013 and 2015, I gathered data from 429 university students drawn from five countries (the U.S., Japan, Germany, Slovenia and India).

The students in my study reported that print was aesthetically more enjoyable, saying things such as "I like the smell of paper" or that reading in print is "real reading." What's more, print gave them a sense of where they were in the book - they could "see" and "feel" where they were in the text.

H. Moon, CC BY-NC-ND

Print was also judged to be easier on the eyes and less likely to encourage multitasking. Almost half the participants complained about eyestrain from reading digitally ("my eyes burn"), and 67 percent indicated they were likely to multitask while reading digitally (compared with 41 percent when reading print).

At the same time, respondents praised digital reading on a number of counts, including the ability to read in the dark, ease of finding material ("plenty of quick information"), saving paper and even the fact they could multitask while reading.

Measuring learning

But the bigger question is whether students are learning as much when they read onscreen.

A number of researchers have sought to measure learning by asking people to read a passage of text, either in print or on a digital device, and then testing for comprehension.

Most studies have found that participants scored about the same when reading in each medium, though a few have indicated that students performed better on tests when they read in print.

The problem, however, with learning-measurement studies is that their notion of "learning" has tended to be simplistic. Reading passages and answering questions afterwards may be a familiar tool in standardized testing, but tells us little about any deeper level of understanding.

Some researchers are beginning to pose more nuanced questions, including one scholar who has considered what happens when people read a story in print or on a digital device and are then asked to reconstruct the plot sequence. The answer: Print yielded better results.

Another aspect of learning is to see how outcomes differ when students are doing their reading in less prescriptive experimental conditions. One study let students choose how much time to spend when reading on each platform. The researchers found that participants devoted less time to reading the passage onscreen - and performed less well on the subsequent comprehension test.

This finding is hardly surprising, given the tendency so many of us have to skim and search when going online, rather than reading slowly and carefully. In my study, one student commented,

"It takes more time to read the same number of pages in print comparing to digital."

Another complained,

"It takes me longer because I read more carefully."

Critical thinking and reading

How does the learning question relate to educational goals? There is much buzz today about wanting students to be good at critical thinking. Definitions of that goal are elusive, but it's pretty clear they involve being able to understand complex ideas, evaluate evidence, weigh alternative perspectives and construct justifiable arguments.

To become proficient in critical thinking - at least in a literate society - students need to be able to handle text. The text may be long, complex or both. To make sense of it, students cannot skim, rush ahead or continually get distracted.

So, does reading in print versus onscreen build critical thinking skills?

mrskradz, CC BY-ND

The comprehension studies we talked about earlier tell us little about the kind of reading we recognize as necessary for serious contemplation or analysis. An alternative approach, at least for starters, is asking students about their digital and paper-based reading patterns - much as physicians ask for histories (along with physicals and lab tests) to figure out what ails their patients.

While my own study didn't directly measure learning, it did query students about their reading patterns and preferences. The responses to some of my questions were particularly revealing.

When asked on which medium they felt they concentrated best, 92 percent replied "print." For long academic readings, 86 percent favored print. Participants also reported being more likely to reread academic materials if they were in print.

What's more, a number of students indicated they believed print was a better medium for learning. One said,

"It's easier to focus."

Others stated,

"[I] feel like the content sticks in the head more easily" and

"I feel like I understand it more."

By contrast, in talking about digital screens, students noted "danger of distraction" and "no concentration."

Obviously, student perceptions are not the same thing as measurable learning outcomes. And my research didn't probe connections between reading platforms and critical thinking.

However, a pattern did emerge: Print stood out as the medium for doing serious work.

Digital is convenient and cheaper

At the same time, we cannot ignore other factors impacting students' decisions about what reading platform to chose for school work.

Convenience is one big consideration: More than 40 percent of participants in my study mentioned convenience (including easy access to materials) as what they liked most about reading onscreen.

Money is another variable. Students were highly conscious about differential prices for print and digital versions of reading materials, with cost often driving choice. As one student put it,

"Cost rules everything around me."

Many students revealed a mismatch between finances and learning. When queried about which reading platform they would choose if cost were the same, 87 percent said "print" for academic work.

Adapting to digital learning

We also need to keep in mind the growing trend for universities to adapt their curricula to fit the proverbial "procrustean" bed of a digital world - a world tailor-made for skimming, scanning and using the "find" function rather than reading slowly and thoughtfully.

ITU Pictures, CC BY

Professors now toy with ditching long or complex reading assignments in favor of short (or more straightforward) ones, moving closer to digital reading patterns in the nonacademic world. This world hypes condensed versions of texts and shorter reading material that is bite-sized to begin with.

The question then is how can universities help students read text thoughtfully, reflectively, and without distraction on digital devices?

One key could be adaptation. Research suggests students may be overconfident about what they are understanding when they read digitally. Teaching them to be mindful in their digital reading (for instance, by writing down key words from the reading) may help in learning.

Another form of adaptation is happening in the realm of digital hardware and software. Modern screens cause less eyestrain, and annotation programs continue to improve. Some digital reading devices now come with tools enabling them to digitally approximate physical page flipping and multiple place-marking.

However, in my view, while short-and-to-the-point may be a good fit for digital consumption, it's not the sort of reading likely to nurture the critical thinking we still talk about as a hallmark of university education.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Why Digital Reading Is No Substitute for Print

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Do students learn as much when they read digitally as they do in print?For both parents and teachers, knowing whether computer-based media are improving or compromising education is a question of concern. With the surge in popularity of e-books, online learning and open educational resources, investigators have been trying to determine whether students do as well when reading an assigned text on a...

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Socratic Seminar (Sentence Starters handout)

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Socratic Seminar Preparation Graphic Organizer

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Socratic Seminar Preparation Graphic Organizer

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Socratic Seminar Graphic Organizer - Record Keeping

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Socratic Seminar Graphic Organizer - Record Keeping

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Socratic Seminars
Tips for a successful socratic seminar:
1. Come prepared. Mark up the text and write out at least two questions or observations.
2. Use a dictionary before the seminar. Do not waste time asking about vocabulary.
3. Respond to the previous speaker. This is the only way to have a real conversation.
4. Refer specifically to the text.
5. Provide evidence to support your opinions.
6. Try to understand a different point of view.
7. Don’t be afraid to refocus the group.
8. Speak loudly and clearly.
9. Listen carefully.
10. Make eye contact when speaking and listening.
11. Do not monopolize the conversation!
There are many ways to participate:
1. Support or challenge an idea. Explain why.
2. Help a speaker provide evidence or a page reference.
3. Ask a question.
4. Paraphrase an idea to clarify or check understanding.
5. Make a connection to another work of literature or art, an historical event, a song, etc.
6. Give another example to illustrate a point.
7. Invite a quiet person to join in.
8. Praise a good idea.

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Socratic Seminar Digital Text versus Paper Text

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Which Format Best Serves A Certain Situation?

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Which Format Best Serves A Certain Situation?

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BookWars: E-books vs. Printed Books - Infographic Video

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Book Wars: E-books versus Printed Books is an infographic video that compares e-books and printed books. The video shows their similarities and differences, and also the reasons and considerations on why people choose their own desired reading format.

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As technology becomes an ever increasing element of our daily lives, educational specialists discuss how best to incorporate it in schools. Which is better ― learning to read by sitting and reading a book versus reading by facing the screen?