2.3 What Do Students Prefer?

          While one of the main focuses of this website is to demonstrate the ways that interactive websites are an effective learning tool for students, it is also important to focus on the ways in which the students themselves prefer to learn. Based on the findings of a 2007 study performed by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), it appears as if there is a rising trend in the popularity of the Internet over books. According to the NEA, reading for pleasure “is declining as an activity amongst teenagers…teens and young adults spend less time reading then any other age group (2007). Internet use amongst teenagers, however, has increased drastically, with daily use rising 53% between 1997-2003 and 25% between 2005-2007.

Source:  National Endowment for the Arts. To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence. Washington: Office of Research and Analysis, 2007. Web

         
          Although this survey focuses on the teenage demographic in the United States, one could assume that the story would not be much different in Canada. What these statistics reveal, therefore, is a growing preference amongst teenagers to spend their time using the Internet rather than reading books. As a result, it is very likely that the majority of students would prefer using interactive websites as a learning method rather than printed text. Indeed, in a study of ESL students studying English in a university setting, Esther Uso-Juan and Noelia Ruiz-Madrid found that 68% of the students preferred learning through the use of hyperlinks, and that they “perceived the links as helpful in order to achieve better text comprehension” (p.73). While Uso-Juan and Ruiz Madrid’s study ultimately found that there was no difference between the reading comprehension of those who learned through interactive websites and those who learned through books, it is interesting to note that the students still felt as if they had learned more through the use of hypertext.

Professor Conducting a Virtual Class

            Indeed, Richard T. Sweeney, a university librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, has noticed that students are spending less time learning through books and more time accessing information online. In an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson retells a story that Sweeny shared with him regarding a student he happened to notice in the university library:

He was walking through the library one afternoon when he noticed a student watching a video of a lecture given by a popular professor of mathematics. Mr. Sweeney assumed that the student was in the professor's course, but the student bashfully told Mr. Sweeney that he was in another professor's class. "He reluctantly went on to describe," the library director says, "that he could learn the material better from this professor on this video” (Carlson, 2).

According to Carlson, it was after this passing conversation with a student that Sweeney began to consider the fact that students are more apt to choose unconventional, technological methods to learn rather than depending solely on books. 


          The following video produced by The New York Times, supports Carlson's observation, as it demonstrates the various reading habits found within a single family. While the parents prefer reading and learning through printed text, their children prefer learning through the internet because, "when you are reading online you can read a lot of different things about a lot of different subjects in a short period of time, whereas a book is usually about just one topic" (2007).

If students prefer to learn in an online environment, perhaps it is time for educators to begin to rethink the way that they format their course material. As Carlson strongly argues, “Change your teaching style. Make blogs, iPods, and video games part of your pedagogy. And learn to accept divided attention spans. A new generation of students has arrived -- and sorry, but they might not want to hear you lecture for an hour” (1). 

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Sources:

Carlson, Scott. "The Net Generation Goes to College." The Chronicle of Higher Education. October          7th, 2005.

“Family of Readers.” Ed. Shayla Harris and Motoko Rich. The New York Times. July 2008.                           Online Video.

National Endowment for the Arts. To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National                           Consequence. Washington: Office of Research and Analysis, 2007. Web.

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.