Click Here for Information: 3.4 Power-Browsing

One of the most prevalent critiques about learning through interactive websites is that users often result to power-browsing when reading online rather than processing information in the linear pattern which promotes deep reading. Power-browsing refers to the action of skimming or scanning information quickly, often skipping over large sections of text, in order to gain an understanding of the main points and locate the most useful material. As previously discussed on the page "Reading Online VS Print," scholars such as Maryanne Wolf fear that an increasing use of the Internet by students has caused them to become mere decoders of information rather than critical thinkers. Ken Pugh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Yale who studied brain scans of children reading, supports Wolf’s argument, stating in an article for The New York Times that, “reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate…is more cognitively enriching, without a doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if your into the 30-second digital mode” (Rich, 2008).

Indeed, a study by Jackob Neilsen found that users spend no more than 40 seconds scanning a website before moving on to the next page. Using an eye-tracking device, he was able to record how 232 users looked at thousands of web pages, and found “that reading behaviour was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks” (Nielsen, 2006). Neilsen discovered that the dominant reading pattern of interactive website users tends to look somewhat like the letter F, as demonstrated in the images below. “F for fast,” comments Neilsen on his blog, “that’s how users read your precious content.” According to Neilsen, the biggest implication for this power-browsing trend is that online users are not reading the content of the websites that they visit thoroughly.

Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies of three websites. The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations. Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

What does this mean when it comes to learning through interactive websites online? If users are power-browsing through web content, are they actually learning anything? There are a variety of mixed answers to these questions. For example, while studies such as the one completed by D. DeStefano and J.A. LeFevre found that interactive websites negatively affect the reading comprehension of university students, a similar study by Esther Uso-Juan and Noelia Ruiz Madrid concluded there was no difference between the test scores of university students who learned through the use of printed materials compared to those who learned through interactive websites and hypertext. Due to these vastly different findings, it is difficult to conclude whether or not the tendency to power-browse does in fact have a negative impact on the learning of students. Overall, although interactive websites may promote a style of power-browsing, they can also be used as successful teaching tools, by helping students to learn valuable searching skills for their future studies and careers.

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Sources:

DeStefano, D., and J.A. LeFevre. “Cognitive load in hypertext reading: A review.” Computers in Human Behaviour 23.3 (2007): 1616-1641. Web.

Neilsen, Jakob. “F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content.” Alertbox, April 17^th, 2006. Web. Accessed from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html.

Rich, Motoko. “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” The New York Times 27 July 2008: A1. Web.

Uso-Juan, Esther and Noelia Ruiz-Madrid. “Reading Printed versus Online Text: A Study of EFL Learners’ Strategic Reading Behaviour.” International Journal of English Studies 9.2 (2009): 59-79. Web.

Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain. New York: Harper, 2007. Print.