An exploratory study on academic reading contexts, technology, and strategies

Reading is a fundamental activity to academic performance at all levels. People’s ability to read efficiently in academic contexts is affected by many factors, including their environment and the technology that they use. In past decades the media that people use to read as well as their reading environments have changed substantially; e.g., people now can use smart phones to read academic material and they are often distracted by notifications. Better reading can potentially be supported through new technologies and the re-design of existing technologies which play a role in the process, but to embark on such design improvements we firstly need to understand the current practices, technologies, preferences, and environments that people use for reading. We present an exploratory study from a survey of 110 participants, offering an updated picture of their reading technology use, environments and strategies. Amongst our main contribution are the results of our analysis, which show that despite a generally negative attitude towards the ability of digital technologies to support focus, there is a pervasive use of technologies in many forms. We also identified that there is a relation between people’s awareness of internal interruptions and their understanding of the negative effect of digital technologies in their attention span. We believe that these results are informative for the design and introduction of new technologies that will support future academic reading endeavours.