I’ve published quite a bit about AI’s impact on reading and I’m still not entirely sure how students or the general public will use AI reading assistance.
This is a battle I’m fighting both with myself and with my students. We are all more likely to skim when reading on a screen, and so I wonder about what should be done about screens in grade school. Have you read Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari? It really opened my eyes to the severity of our collective lack of attention.
Very interesting. Another aspect to consider that that reading on screen is worse (in terms of retention and attention) than reading on paper (e.g., Clinton, 2019; Delgado & Salmon, 2021).
Prefatory note: I love reading and believe it has brought me innumerable benefits beyond the pleasure I still derive from the activity. Professionally, however, I have to help other instructors meet their learning objectives in this new age.
Many of our students lack reading skills our faculty took for granted, not long ago. Reading compliance is an old problem, but AI has made previous solutions obsolete; has it also made the problem obsolete? Can students engage with AI to develop an understanding of course concepts embedded in the readings - without deep reading?
The alternatives aren’t great. Public schools are unlikely to ever have the resources to fix the problem, and we aren’t going back to placement testing and remediation. Grant funds that allow us to offer co-requisite reading classes or intensive tutoring are likely to dry up. I think we have the expertise (not me, academia as a whole) to develop an AI that is at least part of the solution. If we cannot, I don’t think we will recognize what survives the problem.
Marc, good piece. I was thinking about reading this morning for a different reason when I saw this.
I have struggled for years to finish books and rarely read fiction for that reason. I have tracked numbers for a few years. My highest number was in 2019, when I finished over 50. The low was in 2023 when it was only 7. I finished 20 last year. Cataracts surgery helped. The thing is I read at books constantly. I try to find the time every day. I have lots of books in progress, about equally print and electronic. I do not seem to follow audiobooks well, and find some narrators irritating, so I leave them alone.
Many years ago, maybe while I was still in grad school in the 80s, I concluded that for each of us there is really only one book, the digested combination of all the books we have read. Because of that, maybe I am less concerned with finishing books than integrating what I do read into a coherent whole. Perhaps too having worked for years troubleshooting electronic textbooks and inclusive access problems, I have come to think of books somewhat in terms of multiple database connections.
I was pretty intrigued by the generative summary in NotebookLM at first but quickly discovered it was formulaic and trite. I was also interested in tools that summarized research. Your points about them being alien is excellent. I wish I had thought of that. One thing I have learned when reading summaries of books, of human or AI origin, is that I often seem to have very different takeaways than the summarizer. I notice this very strongly with novels, but also with history and general nonfiction. I mentioned my idea that we each carry a single book inside of us. That book, and the collection of all the other books and articles, as well as personal experience and worldview, shape why, what, and how we read. That cannot be captured by AI summaries. That is a big part of the alienness to me.
One thing I've done every few years since about 2008 or so is to map out how I read. I find it revealing to see what I do as I read. This includes what apps I use to read, take notes, conduct searches for unfamiliar terms or ideas the author takes for granted, or to follow up tangents I find. Even when reading a print book I rely on devices to complement and supplement the book.
That brings me to one last point, in an age of electronic textbooks or where the ebook version of a book is cheaper than a print one, how do you enforce in-seat, device free reading? I am genuinely curious about this. I am an Instructional Technologist for the University of Missouri System and spend a lot of time supporting online textbooks and other course materials from publishers. I would like to know how this plays out if you have or plan to do this.
This is a battle I’m fighting both with myself and with my students. We are all more likely to skim when reading on a screen, and so I wonder about what should be done about screens in grade school. Have you read Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari? It really opened my eyes to the severity of our collective lack of attention.
No, not yet, but I will put it on my reading list. Thanks!
Do you mean Stolen Focus? I enjoyed that immensely and got some benefit from it.
Ah yes! Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention.
Very interesting. Another aspect to consider that that reading on screen is worse (in terms of retention and attention) than reading on paper (e.g., Clinton, 2019; Delgado & Salmon, 2021).
Prefatory note: I love reading and believe it has brought me innumerable benefits beyond the pleasure I still derive from the activity. Professionally, however, I have to help other instructors meet their learning objectives in this new age.
Many of our students lack reading skills our faculty took for granted, not long ago. Reading compliance is an old problem, but AI has made previous solutions obsolete; has it also made the problem obsolete? Can students engage with AI to develop an understanding of course concepts embedded in the readings - without deep reading?
The alternatives aren’t great. Public schools are unlikely to ever have the resources to fix the problem, and we aren’t going back to placement testing and remediation. Grant funds that allow us to offer co-requisite reading classes or intensive tutoring are likely to dry up. I think we have the expertise (not me, academia as a whole) to develop an AI that is at least part of the solution. If we cannot, I don’t think we will recognize what survives the problem.
Marc, good piece. I was thinking about reading this morning for a different reason when I saw this.
I have struggled for years to finish books and rarely read fiction for that reason. I have tracked numbers for a few years. My highest number was in 2019, when I finished over 50. The low was in 2023 when it was only 7. I finished 20 last year. Cataracts surgery helped. The thing is I read at books constantly. I try to find the time every day. I have lots of books in progress, about equally print and electronic. I do not seem to follow audiobooks well, and find some narrators irritating, so I leave them alone.
Many years ago, maybe while I was still in grad school in the 80s, I concluded that for each of us there is really only one book, the digested combination of all the books we have read. Because of that, maybe I am less concerned with finishing books than integrating what I do read into a coherent whole. Perhaps too having worked for years troubleshooting electronic textbooks and inclusive access problems, I have come to think of books somewhat in terms of multiple database connections.
I was pretty intrigued by the generative summary in NotebookLM at first but quickly discovered it was formulaic and trite. I was also interested in tools that summarized research. Your points about them being alien is excellent. I wish I had thought of that. One thing I have learned when reading summaries of books, of human or AI origin, is that I often seem to have very different takeaways than the summarizer. I notice this very strongly with novels, but also with history and general nonfiction. I mentioned my idea that we each carry a single book inside of us. That book, and the collection of all the other books and articles, as well as personal experience and worldview, shape why, what, and how we read. That cannot be captured by AI summaries. That is a big part of the alienness to me.
One thing I've done every few years since about 2008 or so is to map out how I read. I find it revealing to see what I do as I read. This includes what apps I use to read, take notes, conduct searches for unfamiliar terms or ideas the author takes for granted, or to follow up tangents I find. Even when reading a print book I rely on devices to complement and supplement the book.
That brings me to one last point, in an age of electronic textbooks or where the ebook version of a book is cheaper than a print one, how do you enforce in-seat, device free reading? I am genuinely curious about this. I am an Instructional Technologist for the University of Missouri System and spend a lot of time supporting online textbooks and other course materials from publishers. I would like to know how this plays out if you have or plan to do this.