EBook Reading Strategies

EBooks are probably the future of many textbooks, and, depending on who you talk to, that will be   fantastic or terrible!  A lot may depend on how the publishers adapt the material to the EBook format. 

Our grandson in 10^th grade has all of his textbooks as EBooks – there is only one paper copy in the classroom.   In his case it appears the AP History book was just copied as is, no adaptation for the different format.  His quiz scores were terrible until he started to print out the pages and read it on paper and mark up the pages.   Suddenly his quiz scores jumped to 90% - 100%! 

On the other hand I viewed a video about a McGraw Hill SmartBook.  They have added multiple strategies to help the reader including showing on overview of all the pages before the text starts and adding self-testing after reading with different colored highlighted text to indicate mastery or not.  The reader is then directed back to the pages where they need to review.

Here are some strategies you can adapt to an EBook (especially an unfriendly one that has just been copied online with no additional help) that will improve comprehension and retention:

*** Get an overview before starting to read.  You can look at the learning objectives, examine the individual pages as in the SmartBook above, or scroll through the entire text reading headings, bold print, or just sampling text here and there throughout.  I think this is an extremely important step that is much harder with an unfriendly EBook but it is necessary to see “The Big Picture” before starting to read the details!

*** Purposefully stop periodically and think about “The Big Picture” and how the information you are reading fits in.

*** After reading a section test yourself using recitation.  Stop and see if you can restate what you read in your own words.   If you can, move forward.  If you cannot, go back and reread until you can.

*** Take separate notes.

The future may be that we will be reading in many different formats.  I think this will place more demands on the reader to be effective and to have an arsenal of strategies that can be adapted to suit different needs and formats.

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First Semester Success: Learning Strategies and Motivation for Your First Semester (or Any Semester) of College, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is available at amazon.com, wordassociation.com and barnesandnoble.com.  Click on the upper right link.