Rethinking reading assignments

Let’s be honest: Most students don’t want to read assignments, let alone for a course such as research methods. Typically, only 20-30% of students will read their assignments ^[1] See Kerr, M. M., & Frese, K. M. (2017). Reading to learn or learning to read? Engaging college students in course readings. College Teaching, 65(1), 28-31. doi:10.1080/87567555.2016.1222577

So how do we get students to ready? According to one handout from the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley ^[2] https://www.utrgv.edu/cte/resources-new/course-design/how-to-get-more-students-to-read-assigned-readings/index.htm , the best way is through quizzes. But that can be problematic if one has a class where students have testing accommodations. One semester, I had a class where nearly 1/3 of the class had such accommodations, and it required students to either go to the testing center, or get as much as double the time. So I realized that was inefficient.

That led to a strategy of having students write about their readings – whether it be in class (write about something you found interesting, or something that confused you), or through journal entries. But even that can bring about procrastination (“Sure, I’ll read, but I’ll wait until the end of the semester to submit all my stuff…”).^[3]And that doesn’t count the procrastination on the part of the professor. 😂

What got me to rethinking the assignments came out of some reading I’ve been doing. In this case, I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t have the source cite handy, but I’ll find one. 🙂 Here’s what my new thoughts are about reading:

• Reading needs to have a clear purpose. We as professors know why we’ve assigned the text to students, but it needs to be more obvious to students why they need to do the reading for a particular class before that class. If there’s no incentive, there’s no reason to read.
• Quizzes can be an incentive, but they’re mostly a stick, rather than the carrot. I need to make it clear why the readings help them to learn the material, and how those readings help prepare students for class.
• Students don’t read the same way we do – they don’t have the context developed over years of study and/or teaching various material. The context needs to be made crystal clear to them.

A lot of what I just mentioned above sounds pretty obvious. Yet, it’s quite easy to forget about this, especially in the middle of a semester! One of my colleagues at GCSU has been known to give her students preparation about the readings — what to look for, how to do the readings, and so forth. The more I think about it, the more I need to do that — not because students are dumb, but because often times, the readings come without the necessary context for them to make sense. Professors have that context through our graduate work, but students don’t.

An example of what I’m thinking about: those who teach quantitative methods know that getting students to recognize categorical, ordinal, dependent, independent and other types of variables is often difficult. But it’s not always clear why students need to learn about each of the types of variables until it impacts their research. So as I’m thinking about the reading assignment that discusses variables, it’s not just a matter of saying, “Well, come up with some examples of ordinal variables,” but getting students to understand, “Ordinal variables are what you need to answer this question – and here’s why.” How do the readings help students to go from definition — example — application and ultimately understanding?