Instructional Strategies and Student eTextbook Reading

Abstract

Students’ reading is an essential part of learning in college courses. However, many instructors are concerned that students do not complete assigned readings, and multiple studies have found evidence to support this concern. A handful of studies suggest adopting strategies to address students’ lack of reading. This research examines various instructional strategies and student eTextbook reading behaviors validated by page view data. Survey responses related to use of instructional strategies were collected. A total of 86 instructors from four public universities participated. Of these participants, 59 submitted the assigned reading pages for their courses. This resulted in reading data from 3,714 students which were examined in this study. The findings indicated that students read about 37% of the assigned pages on any given day during the semester. Also, of the students that read, two-thirds made at least one annotation and students tend to re-read the pages they annotated. Most importantly, student reading in the courses where strategies were used was almost three times higher than in the courses where no strategies were implemented.