The study reported here investigated reading among students from the perspective of how students choose to use their time and whether they self-ration it. A survey of undergraduate students found that their self-reported allocation of time to academic activities other than reading was positively correlated to the reading that they did and that…

Engaging students in completing assigned reading material, particularly textbooks, is a challenge faced by many college professors. Further, research has demonstrated student compliance is typically low with reading course textbooks. This study explores the impact of assigning content-specific books written for popular audiences and having…

We compared college students' learning from, and perceptions of, print and digital readings, with the goal of providing an informed recommendation for students and educators regarding best approaches for reading assignments. To add to the literature, we focused on a common experience in college -- reading an educational article -- in addition to…

This article presents a summation of the field's past contributions to understanding the nature of undergraduate reading practices and meaning making processes in relation to contemporary perspectives of disciplinary literacies. In presenting a synthesis of over 40 studies across interdisciplinary journals, the goal was to construct a generalized…

This study aims to explore the effects of implementing the literature circles strategy for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in levels 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of a public university in the Amazon Region of Ecuador. For this purpose, three English language teachers conducted some action research. Two hundred fourteen students of English Arts…

In an effort to motivate undergraduate engineering students to prepare for class by reviewing material before lectures, a "Look-Ahead" problem was utilized. Students from two undergraduate engineering courses; Statics and Electronic Circuits, were assigned problems from course material that had not yet been covered in class. These…

This study investigated the effects of task relevance instructions and topic beliefs on reading processes and memory for belief-related text. Undergraduates received task instructions (focus on arguments for vs. against) before reading a dual-position text. In Experiment 1 (n = 88), a reading time methodology showed no differences in reading time…

It is commonly accepted in the academy that developing a critical thinking capacity and related capabilities will make students more effective thinkers and writers, and that these are desirable traits for graduates to have no matter what path they take after graduation. While most academics agree that critical thinking is an essential component of…

This exploratory study analyzes learner-learner interactions within a virtual environment when collaboratively reading Spanish poetry in a Hispanic literature course at the college level via an ecological theoretical perspective (van Lier, 2004). The goals of the study are (a) to present empirical data that illustrate the theoretical construct of…

The author presents self-report data from students in three upper-level undergraduate courses to illustrate the comparative effectiveness of different out-of-class assessment approaches in promoting completion and comprehension of reading assignments. Students reported agreeing or strongly agreeing that all three assignments motivated them to…

Many students, particularly underprepared students, struggle to identify the essential information in empirical articles. We describe a set of assignments for instructing general psychology students to dissect the structure of such articles. Students in General Psychology I read empirical articles and answered a set of general, factual questions…

Required first-year English courses present instructors with a challenge common in the humanities: How do we motivate students to engage in active reading rather than passively scroll down online guides? Introductory literature courses aim to develop students' critical thinking through close reading, analysis, and argumentation--skills demanding…

High-structure courses or flipped courses require students to obtain course content before class so that class time can be used for active-learning exercises. While textbooks are used ubiquitously in college biology courses for content dissemination, studies have shown that students frequently do not read their textbooks. To address this issue, we…

In this experiment, students in a large undergraduate biology course were first exposed to the concepts without new technical vocabulary ("jargon") in a pre-class reading assignment. Their learning of the concepts and jargon was compared with that of an equivalent group of students in another section of the same course, whose pre-class…

In this study, 935 undergraduate college students from a regional four-year university responded to an online time-diary survey asking them to report their multitasking habits and practices while engaged in four main activities: reading voluntarily for fun, reading for academic purposes, watching television (TV), and using the Internet. Results…