Reverse gear: Printed books are better than digital screens says study

Geneva, January 11: In the age of digitalization students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets, e-readers.

A research in learning and text comprehension, a recent work had focused on the differences between reading print and digital media. While new forms of classroom technology like digital textbooks are more accessible and portable, it would be wrong to assume that students will automatically be better served by digital reading simply because they prefer it.

The work had revealed a significant discrepancy. Students said they preferred and performed better when reading on screens. But their actual performance tended to suffer.

 

For example, from the review of research done since 1992, it was found that students were able to better comprehend information in print for texts that were more than a page in length. This appears to be related to the disruptive effect that scrolling has on comprehension. It was also surprising to learn that few researchers tested different levels of comprehension or documented reading time in their studies of printed and digital texts.

Across the studies, the texts differed in length, and we collected varying data (e.g., reading time). Nonetheless, some key findings emerged that shed new light on the differences between reading printed and digital content:

Students overwhelming preferred to read digitally.

Reading was significantly faster online than in print.

Students judged their comprehension as better online than in print.

Paradoxically, overall comprehension was better for print versus digital reading.

The medium didn’t matter for general questions (like understanding the main idea of the text).

But when it came to specific questions, comprehension was significantly better when participants read printed texts.