Does Reading on Computer Screens Affect Student Learning?

Seven years ago Naomi S. Baron walked past her campus bookstore, noticed a sign advertising digital-textbook rentals, and started to worry.

Ms. Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University and author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, studies the knotted relationship between technology and language. To her, the sign was a harbinger. It foretold a world where students would absorb less from the readings they did on the campus, as they temporarily interacted with texts online before casting them off and never returning.

The mind-set with reading on a computer or tablet screen, says Ms. Baron, becomes “I’m studying for a test, and this piece of text is not going to become a part of who I am.”

Ms. Baron is not the only professor worried about how reading on screens affects student learning. The question was submitted by a Chronicle reader in our recent call to suggest a topic we should investigate, and it received the most votes from other readers.

The question was sent in by Michelle Blake, an adjunct professor of English at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Blake became curious about the subject after she noticed that her students’ eyes seemed to glide over obvious errors in their papers while reading aloud. She wondered how the web affected students’ ability to engage with texts.

In search of an answer, we talked to several professors both about their research on the issue and their interactions with students. So far the major research findings on the topic are mixed, but scholars we spoke to agreed that how students digest knowledge in a digital world is unlike how they have ever done it before.

‘Wheat From the Chaff’

A few studies have found little difference in retention when students read on a screen versus in print, though one, from Norway’s University of Stavanger, did suggest that high-school students remember less when they read a text digitally.

Some evidence exists that when students multitask (or are faced with the temptations of internet access), their comprehension dips. But as of yet, it’s unclear what role screens play in that outcome.

Ms. Baron says researchers cannot rely on students’ immediate recall of what they just read, as most studies have done so far. How that text might have shifted their thinking, influenced their analysis, fostered their emotional growth, or nested in their brains for years are all variables to consider that are not yet easily measurable.

“This is a question we have to ask,” Ms. Baron says. “But we haven’t figured out how to ask it in a really meaningful way.”

Ms. Baron says her research shows that students are more engrossed in the material when they read it in print. She surveyed 429 college students in five countries and asked them on which medium they concentrated best when reading. Ninety-two percent answered print.

The results solidified her hunch that students have trouble switching into academic-reading mode when the text is on a screen. With screens, you are conditioned to skim and scan, argues Ms. Baron. It is difficult for students to read deeply when they scroll through Baldwin or Chaucer in the same way they consume headlines from CNN.

Ms. Baron also says screen reading has distorted how students encounter printed works by altering their attention spans. Once, after she delivered a guest lecture, a student approached her and said that he loved to read in print but that, when he does, he constantly feels as if he is about to be interrupted by a ping from his phone.

Kaveri Subrahmanyam, chair of the department of child and family studies at California State University at Los Angeles, conducted a study that found no noticeable disparity between reading in print and on a screen.

Ms. Subrahmanyam says some divergence between print and screen reading might have arisen if the study had examined long-term effects. (She and her colleagues tested comprehension immediately after students had completed an exercise.)

Based on her teaching experience, Ms. Subrahmanyam says she is fairly certain that the two reading processes are substantially different. She and her colleagues have witnessed that difference in their own students. Students in her courses today are much less likely to retain information than those 20 years ago, says Ms. Subrahmanyam, possibly due to screens.

“Sometimes we laugh and say maybe we’re just getting older, getting less tolerant,” Ms. Subrahmanyam says.

Sandra L. Calvert, a professor of psychology at Georgetown University, noticed similar retention problems in her students when they took notes with computers. Those who tapped on their keyboards and stared at their laptops copied her words verbatim. But they did not seem engaged with the lesson she was teaching.

Physically scribbling in margins, underlining, and highlighting — both for taking notes and reading — allow students to locate real substance and “pick out the wheat from the chaff,” says Ms. Calvert, adding that screens can inhibit that information-harvesting process.

The ‘Reading Circuit’

Maryanne Wolf is among those exploring how screen reading might be altering adolescent brains. Ms. Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, chronicled the development of the reading brain in her book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

After seven years of research, Ms. Wolf says, she had to change a few chapters right before publication because she realized, due to screens, that “the reading brain is literally molting under everyone’s fingertips.” Ms. Wolf thinks the prevalence of screen reading at a young age could warp the formation of the “reading circuit” in the brain, making children too reliant on “external platforms,” like the internet, for knowledge.

But not all academics think screen reading could lead to such dire outcomes.

Mark Marino, an associate professor of writing at the University of Southern California, says online texts provide a resource that print cannot: hyperlinks. Students can click on a linked reference in a text and understand it against the larger backdrop of discourse, Mr. Marino notes.

Online texts also tend to be cheaper than printed textbooks, which can help a student’s budget.

The issue will probably continue to resonate with college professors, especially while evidence is largely anecdotal and studies are inconclusive. The heart of the matter may simply be the changing habits and attitudes of students toward their studies — essentially, a cultural divide between professors and pupils.

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