On the first day of class, last week, I informed the students of my two courses that both textbooks are e-books. The students weren’t too happy about that. I explained that publishers have been pushing their electronic versions lately; e-books accounted for only 1 per cent of all textbooks in 2010, but now the fraction has reached 25 per cent. I added, smilingly, “but you’re the digital and screen generation, so you’re OK with that, right?”
No, they were not. They overwhelmingly voiced their preference for reading on paper, at least when it’s something serious and requiring some solid attention.
Are people not reading primarily on screen? And does reading electronically really provide a poorer experience and less comprehension?
Statistics indicate that if we consider all types of reading, including social media posts, webpages, blogs, chat messages, news texts from apps, etc., then indeed, a huge portion of people’s reading is done on screen. Statistics also indicate despite the rise of electronic reading devices (Kindle and such media), most serious reading (fiction and non-fiction) is done on paper. As to the quality of reading and comprehension, while studies have varied in their conclusions, the majority have tended to indicate better comprehension and greater ability to analyse the content of a text when read on paper.
And this conclusion is valid for students as well. In 2015, Naomi Baron, a professor of linguistics at the American University in Washington, DC, published a book-length study of student attitudes toward reading on screen versus in print.
She interviewed 429 students at universities in the US, Germany, India, Japan and Slovenia. Her results and conclusions were rather stunning: 92 per cent of the students stated that they prefer to read in print. The two main reasons they gave were: a) it’s too easy to get distracted when reading on screen; b) it’s easier to focus on the ideas when reading on paper.
Other researchers have studied these two effects (distraction and greater focus) among readers on screen. They have found that when people (especially youngsters) read on screen, 90 per cent of them multitask, compared to 1 per cent of those who are reading on paper. Moreover, they spend less time on a given text when they read it on screen. In fact, on electronic formats, people tend to skim, or read “diagonally”, hardly ever word by word.
But are there no advantages to electronic reading? Sure there are. One of the main selling points of university textbook publishers is that the texts are hyperlinked (connecting ideas or taking the reader to relevant sections in a click), they are supplemented with interactive activities or multimedia components (videos, animations, simulations), and they are instantly searchable.
You don’t have to flip through pages to find a sentence that you had previously read; you can just search for it. Publishers tend to add that e-books are environmentally friendly (no trees were cut for any paper to print on) and “democratising” (they can reach anybody anywhere instantly). Still, e-books are not cheap: for Dh320, you get a card with an alphanumeric code to give you access to the General Physics e-book I use – plus the supplementary material.
Screen-reading strategies
Oh, and e-books don’t take any physical space and can accompany you wherever you go! And this makes them extremely attractive for people like me, as I have practically run out of space in my office and even in my home. Plus, I often need to find an important passage in one of my books when I’m on travel. E-books solve both of these problems completely. And now that they can easily be highlighted and annotated, they are pushing strongly into the digital era.
But there is still the problem of concentration and reading comprehension. What good is having all your books with you at all times and weighing nothing, if when you read them, you get very little from them?
Educators have started to develop screen-reading strategies and to teach them to students, realising that the digital revolution is here to stay. Whatever we think of e-books, we must train students to read effectively on screen. We need to explain to youngsters that if they’re going to extract anything meaty from their electronic reading, they must: a) turn off all distractions (social media, chat messages, music, etc.) while reading; b) take notes or annotate the e-text, at least to prevent one’s mind from drifting and wandering; c) manage eye fatigue, by closing eyes for a few minutes every hour or so.
We cannot stop the evolution of technology, in this case from pens to typewriters to keyboards and now to tablets and smartphones. We can at most try to drive technology in the right directions. We must do all that we can to prevent a new technology’s negative effects. This can be achieved by devising proper and beneficial ways of using it. Screen reading is here to stay, and indeed it will soon become the main reading tool; let us try to use it effectively.
Nidhal Guessoum is a professor of physics and astronomy at the American University of Sharjah. You can follow him on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/@NidhalGuessoum.
