I recently finished How We Read Now, by Naomi S. Baron. Its audience has to be educators, but it is friendly for a general reader as well.Baron gives a book length literature review of current research (as of 2021) about reading on screens versus in print. She focuses on academic reading, but she also has chapters on learning from audio and video and how it compares to text. As a high school librarian, my goal was to see where and how I and my classroom based colleagues can use best practices when working with our students. For me, that means reading and writing from sources for inquiry projects and making recommendations about reading formats.

A TL;DR of the research and recommended strategies from the book is below, along with my own notes, but I think it is a great professional read if you are a school librarian or classroom teacher. The book covers the research on both reading from single sources and across multiple documents in print and digital formats. The distinctions are somewhat blurred in the summary because I am focused on research reading over single document class readings, but I have tried to clarify specifics, if applicable. Many of the studies were done with college students, but Baron does include K-12 research, and she adds a section on school age children in every chapter, which includes middle and high school students. The summary covers the parts that apply to teens.

Spoiler alert: print reading leads to better comprehension scores in most of the experiments. I am not suggesting that we stop reading digital texts. As Baron suggests in her book, there are plenty of advantages to digital documents, and it’s not too likely we will be moving backwards. But there is a lot to be done to correct for the current deficits most students have when reading digitally. The author references Maryanne Wolf’s book Reader Come Home and that book’s argument that we need to teach children to have bilterate brains that can move effectively between print and digital reading. Ezra Klein interviewed Wolfe for his podcast in 2022. Her book is very accessible and worth a read.

Digital Reading

Across the board, research showed lower comprehension scores for digital documents compared to print ones. Baron suggests a few reasons for these findings: the characteristics of cell phones and computers versus print, our attitudes and expectations of these technologies, and the characteristics of our students.

When people read digital documents, they tend to hyper read web pages instead of slowing down and reading from beginning to end. They read quickly, skimming, scanning, and clicking hyperlinks while trying to find relevant information.

Students tend to put less mental effort into reading on a screen because they assume that it will be easier than print reading. Some of the research shows that males and/or struggling or reluctant readers find digital interfaces more motivating than print ones, which in some cases were labeled as boring. This might be because of a digital device’s interactivity and association with entertainment.

In experiments, students overestimate their ability and performance before and after they complete a task. In comprehension tests that compare reading digital versus print documents, students scored about the same when identifying the main idea and concrete details of a text. But with tasks that required them to make inferences, they did much better with print. These issues were more pronounced with informational than with narrative documents. In one study, doing a task that involved abstract reasoning before using a digital text led to better comprehension in the experimental task.

On interfaces that used scrolling on a screen (e.g. phones and web browsers) vs. paging (e.g. e-reader), results in comprehension experiments were lower. This was especially true for participants that had educational challenges like dyslexia or ADHD. The theory is that, unlike print documents that have physical boundaries that make it easier to process information, scrolling pages don’t have these anchors. This increase cognitive load on your working memory because people tend to hyper read such interfaces.

In Baron’s own research, she found 87% of university students and 85% of secondary students surveyed said they preferred print for longer academic reading. It is less distracting and easier to concentrate and focus. That sentiment was echoed in other studies in the book.

Baron points out that in education circles, and probably elsewhere, “online reading” usually means reading several web pages to gather and synthesize information to answer a query. Outside of specific teacher led activities that involve reading a single document for analysis or background, this type of multiple document reading is more prevalent in high schools, especially when talking about inquiry projects or basic research tasks.

Like with scrolling, and hyper reading in general, reading across multiple documents in a search increases the cognitive load on the reader. This is true with print documents as well, but magazines, newspapers, books, maps, and other print documents have distinct features that give them a unique kind of fingerprint for your brain. Digital documents tend to be like a homogenous batch of sources to our brains.

In one interesting bit of research, students could remember the path to get to a document they found, but not the information from the document itself. In other words, it implied we outsource the work of storing the information since we could locate the document if we needed it.

Online reading requires training in information literacy skills, and the book delves into some of the research on this topic. Baron calls these skills Search Scrutinize, and Synthesize, which I thought was very catchy.

Studies show that secondary and college students rely on irrelevant criteria for source evaluation, e.g. sites with professional looking designs got rated higher. Students spent 2-3 seconds on a page before making an evaluation judgement. A small percentage of students in one study indicated the need to vet the author of the sites, but none of the them followed through with it.

When students have high rates of social media usage or lower navigation skills, it correlated with poor comprehension and lower ability with source evaluation.

Students also put high degree in trust in search engine results. They believed that the first page in the results was placed there because the search engine had ranked the sites by their quality, with the best ones on the first page of results.

Even when teenagers were taught how to evaluate sites in lessons about “fake news,” they still made errors in subsequent evaluation tasks. This was seen as a developmental issue. If material was seen as boring or irrelevant to their lives, the teens gave it a lower score.

There are several predictors of performance with digital documents: 1) the amount of prior knowledge about a topic, 2) the capacity of verbal and and visuospatial working memory 3) competency with print comprehension and navigation / information literacy skills. Better information literacy skills can also help make up for lower print reading skills.

Print Reading

As a general rule, reading in print had superior performance in comprehension experiments. When reading in print, students had better concentration and focus. When there was a time limit on the task, they had better comprehension than with digital readings.

Although getting the main idea of the reading was equivalent with print and digital, participants had a deeper level of understanding and a better ability to make inferences when reading print.

When doing a narrative reading, they had a better memory of when and where an event in the reading occured.

As I mentioned earlier, students preferred print for longer texts because they found it easier to concentrate and focus, along with other reasons, (e.g. easier to annotate), less distraction). The boundaries of the page also help to “anchor” the brain, and this leads to less cognitive overload. Also, students believe that print documents will take more time, so they slow down their reading. But some students were less motivated by print reading. They saw it as boring compared to digital documents.

When using multiple documents to find and synthesize information, print has distinct “fingerprint.” These were the unique physical characteristics such as size, texture etc. In an experiment where students were given a textbook or a set of print documents to use to write an essay, the students with the document produced essays that showed more coherent and synthesis of information. The textbook had a standardized format throughout.

Reading across multiple documents, no matter if they are digital or print, means heavier lifting (i.e. cognitively). The task of resolving conflicting information and synthesizing the information is complex. The increased mental work leads to more integration of the knowledge into memory. In print, the load is lightened by the physical characteristics of print and attitudes or expectations about reading in print vs. digital

Recommendations for Educators

Baron gives a useful set of recommendations based on research studies and her own work as a professor and researcher. Overall, her strategies make a lot of sense, but I will try to add a few additional thoughts.

Mindset

When reading digital documents, students need to:

• learn about the research on hyper reading
• slow down and take their time with academic reading
• be taught how to get an accurate measure of how much they are absorbing
• build a toolkit of reading and fixup strategies that work with digital documents
• not assume that shorter texts will be easier or faster to read

Students need to concentrate on reading the text. Teach them how to set goals about what they want to accomplish with the reading of the document.

This might include providing flexible advanced reading prompts and teaching them how to size up the length, complexity, and detail of the reading before they take off running with it.

Remove distractions like a phone, or if using it to read, put it on do not disturb mode. But Baron also cites research that a cell phone within sight, or even in the same room and off, can add cognitive load and be a distraction. Help them be mindful of the urge to multitask and to try to quell it.

Technology

Adjust the technology settings to fit your reading needs. Adjust the letter and spacing and screen brightness to make reading easier. This is very helpful for students with dyslexia or other educational challenges.

You might help students browser extensions or other tools that help block ads or reformat pages for distraction free reading, Or show them how to curate useful sources and capture smaller chunks of a page to work with in a document or note taking program.

If their screen is set to scroll, they can move the page until they have about a page worth of reading. Make sure they know to take their finger off of the mouse or the phone screen while reading. When they are done with the page, have them stop and think about what they just read.

Baron suggests using questions from Mortimer J Adler’s classic guide How to Read a Book:

• What have I learned?
• Do I agree or disagree?
• What don’t I understand?
• How does what I’ve read connect with what I already know or have encountered elsewhere?
• Why does what I’ve read matter?

Engagement

Teach students how to actively engage with the text. Baron suggests the following exercises:

• at the end of the reading, write down keywords that describe the important ideas
• write a summary of what you have read & learned
• when using multiple documents, use a concept map to make sense of the information in and between documents
• annotate the document and / or take notes.
• teach students how to actively engage with the text, model it, and provide scaffolds, as needed

Students may need training in how to do digital annotation and notetaking. This includes teaching them why it is an important exercise since it can take more effort than the analog version. They should also know they can mix and match digital and analog methods, if they choose (e.g. digital annotation, handwritten notes).

Since digital documents don’t have the same distinctive “fingerprint” that print documents do, teach students how to get the lay of the digital landscapes of their documents. This might mean previewing the document first and making note of the headings and other text features. They should ask “what makes this page different than the others I have seen so far?” Baron says it is analogous to trying to tell twins apart.

At the end of the document (or every page or two), students can do an informal quiz about the content of the reading. You might give them a generic set of questions as a template. This might be most helpful for content area readings as opposed to research assignment, while summary and paraphrasing exercises might be better for research projects.

Teach students that the synthesis step has three parts:

(1) visualizing all the pieces in your mind or tangibly (e.g. with a concept map)

They might use a concept map or other tool to organize the information. Some researchers contend that visual organizers benefit students with learning difficulties the most.

(2) compare information from the various sources

Students should ask themselves, “where do my sources compliment or agree / disagree?” Then summarize the findings before interpreting results.. Finally, they could discuss the potential conclusions with other people along with the reasons for their conclusions.

(3) create an integrated product.

Most students will probably need lots of modeling and examples about how to do this step. A handout or tutorial could help scaffold their analysis when working independently.

Audio and Video

The last few chapters of the book discuss using audio (e.g. audiobooks, podcasts) and video (e.g. YouTube videos, documentaries) for learning compared to reading a text. Research studies on these modes of learning had results that were very similar to digital reading. Students overestimate how much they have absorbed and they don’t engage as much as they do with print.

The recommendations are similar to those for digital reading.

• Don’t assume you can comprehend as you can with print when watching / listening to video or audio.
• Be deliberate about focusing on the task and avoid the urge to multitask.
• Take notes as you watch / listen. Use the techniques of writing down keywords, summarizing, preview prompts, and self-quizzing.
• Instead of rereading passages, you can rewind the to listen or watch parts that caused confusion or need clarification.

Additional Notes

The research about digital reading echoes other findings about students technology use. Studies on LLM programs like ChatGPT lead to lower cognitive engagement and taking mental shortcuts by offloading thinking onto the machine. Similarly, when adolescents do online research, studies show that they overestimate their abilities and have a lot of misconceptions and skill deficits.

A throughline in all these areas is a great need for teaching students the skills they need to be effective in a world that is increasingly shifting toward digital sources and away from analog ones. There is a lot at stake for students. They need to develop technology-related knowledge and skills, but even more importantly, they have to build and adapt traditional reading, research, and critical thinking skills.

In my experience, many high school teachers and administrators dismiss the need for such lessons. They either assume that their students know these skills because they should have learned them in earlier grades or they claim they don’t have time or the expertise to cover them. It is much like conversations on teaching reading in the content areas, digital citizenship, retooling for common core, or many other conversations in education.

It’s true that they are content teachers, not reading teachers, technology integration specialists, or librarians. But I would argue that they are giving students complex readings, expecting independence when researching, and using technologies that require a new set of skills.

Decades of research and my own long career working with high schoolers confirms they aren’t learning these skills in lower grades, on their own, and in most cases, not in high school, despite my best efforts to sell colleagues on these points.

In my opinion, the critical element that needs to be addressed with digital reading is active engagement with the text. Students need to be taught slow down and approach digital reading with digital reading wit hthe same attention and care that teachers might have given to close reading with print. It is not either / or. It’s both / and.

Resources

There are plenty of places to find templates and resources about strategies that can be adapted for digital reading. Here are a few of my favorites:

AVID Open ACCESS

The AVID program provides free access to some of their lessons and resources on their site. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t an AVID school. They provide some excellent resources and context on their site.

AdLit

A great resource site for adolescent literacy in general, this site has a ton of lessons and templates that could be used for digital reading.

Canva

Canva has a ton of very slick templates for graphic organizers, many of which could be customized and used for digital reading. If you are an educator and you don’t have a free educator account, then sign up and get verified.. It is an amazing tool.

My Handouts

I have created handouts for my library program for research projects. If you use them, please let me know.

Here are a few relevant ones:

THIEVES

This is a pre-reading strategy I learned about from Sunday Cummins and her book Nurturing Informed Thinking. It’s a great resource for teaching how to synthesize and write about multiple sources. I work in a high school, but I find that some of the best materials on research writing are for middle school teachers. The idea is that you would teach students stop and preview a site before reading, or worse, rushing through it.

Notice and Note Nonfiction Signposts

The Notice and Note reading strategy developed by Robert Probst and Kylene Beers is a great structure to use with online reading. It is very concrete and simple, but surprisingly effective.

Using Google Keep for Research

If you are a Google Workspace district and your students have access to Google Keep, then this handout explains how to use Keep for digital notetaking. If you don’t have access to or support for other tools like Diigo, Scrible, or similar tools for digital annotation, Keep will do the job.