Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Reading e-texts brings several challenges to readers, such as the difficulty of reading on the screen in the case of long lines, difficulty browsing and moving from page to page, and the inability of the search tools to satisfy the needs and requirements of the reader. These aspects have drawn the attention in many research areas, such as information science, computing science, and human science. Thus, there are three categories of digital reading research:
- I.
Research focused on the usability of e-text, e.g., comparing reading on-screen to paper reading; measuring the legibility and comprehension of text (Davis, Tierney, & Chang, 2005; Dillon, 2001); and examining user behaviours in digital environments.
- II.
Research presented the ‘new approach of technologies support reading on screen’ which concentrated on new software and hardware, hypertext, and interface design (Godoy, Schiaffino, & Amandi, 2004; Scane, 2003; Thissen, 2004).
- III.
Finally, research focused on the phenomenology of reading, such as studying human interaction with e-resources and the reading process in both linear text and hypertext (Carusi, 2006; Miall & Dobson, 2001).
Generally, reading is a complex activity. It requires different skills according to the purpose of reading. Furthermore, the reading scenario changes based on the type of e- materials, starting from short text reading (i.e., e-mail) to long text reading (i.e., e-books). For instance, scholarly articles are not similar to books. In the first case, readers usually skip the abstract of an article, skim the introduction, read the research problem, and subsequently read various paragraphs for the theoretical perspective. These differences in actions lead to the creation of several functions and tools to meet all reading requirements.
The aim of this study is to observe how students read school books in e-format, to accordingly investigate reading behaviours adopted by students so as to examine how students’ reading behaviours change in both versions. However, understanding these changes in the reading process would support designers in their effort to design an effective computer-based learning environment.
In this work, we will attempt to build an e-reading strategy based on users’ cognitive and behavioural processes. The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. First, we illustrate related work in reading e- resources behaviours. Second, we define the methodology of research and dataset for analysis. Third, we provide two reading strategy models. Finally, we summarise findings and make generalisations and recommendations for the reading process.
TopWith the increase in the number of students who read e- text for pleasure or learning, there are still deficiencies in studies that seek to understand how people deal with the digital text as previous studies have shown, i.e., most researchers in e-reading are just focused on comparing issues without having a clear idea about how readers deal with e-text or if this technology has affected the way that readers read e-text (Livingstone, 2003; Anuradha, 2006; Cavanaugh, 2006; Han, 2008; Hines, 2009; Segal-Drori, Korat et al., 2009; Shin, 2011).