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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Books You Won't Remember This Post

Posted by on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 3:38 PM

Sure, colleges are jumping on the iPad bandwagon, but it looks like there might be a problem with that: Slog tipper Maggie alerts us to this study, which says that students retain information better in print than in a scrolling online format. (It doesn't mention what the retention levels look like when the electronic format apes a book, with virtual flipping pages.)

The point of the study isn't to inspire anti-e-book fervor, though. It's just a reminder that different people require different learning methods:

"What it could do is give us recognition of how to better design materials so all people learn well, so we don't have this group of low-working-memory-capacity individuals who are behind the curve and are for some reason failing to learn when this material is in this scrolling form," he said.

 

Comments (8) RSS

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Fnarf 1
The article doesn't say "print", it says "print-like formats", but doesn't bother explaining what that means. I get the impression they're talking about PDFs or something.
Posted by Fnarf http://www.facebook.com/fnarf on March 30, 2010 at 4:11 PM
2
Thing is, once I opened the full-text article I was scrolling within a minute. Don't think I want my WRC tested.

http://casanchez.faculty.asu.edu/pubs/sc…
Posted by Maggie on March 30, 2010 at 4:17 PM
Will in Seattle 3
A lot of retention is usage and repetition - the ability to write usable notes and highlight things helps a lot.
Posted by Will in Seattle http://www.facebook.com/WillSeattle on March 30, 2010 at 5:06 PM
josh 4
Actually, the study seems to be *exactly* about what happens when the electronic format apes a book by using paginated content with subheadings and links to flip pages.

http://casanchez.faculty.asu.edu/pubs/sc…

Of course, you have to click from the scroll-based news item to the page-like article to learn this, which is, I guess, a nice proof of principle.
Posted by josh http://www.sciencevsromance.net on March 30, 2010 at 5:32 PM
Will in Seattle 5
pages r good
Posted by Will in Seattle http://www.facebook.com/WillSeattle on March 30, 2010 at 5:50 PM
6

They realize you can also use the Page Down key instead of scrolling...dear God...tell me they know this...
Posted by Rudolf van Ottoman on March 30, 2010 at 7:48 PM
7
"You Won't Remember This Post"
Sure I will. I have every Slog post printed on a separate sheet of paper, dating back several years. Each month I type up an index and TOC.
Posted by Pulp Journalism on March 30, 2010 at 8:19 PM
8
Do you think James Joyces' Ulysses would get through the spam filter?
Posted by Mr. Owl on March 31, 2010 at 5:32 AM

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