Associate education professors Jeff Blacklock and Su Hua Huang presented their study, “Exploring the Changing Reading Habits of American College Students” Feb. 5 during the first Faculty Forum Series lecture.
The series is split up between the fall and spring semesters, but schedule conflicts last semester have caused this spring’s schedule to include three presentations.
“The Faculty Forum Series has been on campus for many years,” Blacklock said. “It’s basically an opportunity for faculty to present research findings to other faculty or interested parties.”
Blacklock said the series is a great venue for the MSU community to present their findings in a friendly atmosphere.
Blacklock’s and Huang’s presentation focuses on a year-long study they did on college students reading habits with academic reading, extra curricular reading (or reading for pleasure) and internet reading.
“There have been studies down on K-12 grade students looking at how those children read,” Blacklock said. “It’s much more limited on studies that have taken place with college students and their reading habits, and whether they have or haven’t changed.”
The primary focus of Blacklock and Huang’s study was how college students are reading. Research consisted of two questions asked: the amount of time spent reading, and how students go about reading and what’s influencing them.
“We’ve found there are quite a few things influencing the way college students are reading and how much time they are spending on reading, specifically in the three areas we focused on. Technology has changed the way we do a lot of things.”
Huang said their study included a survey of 1265 students on campus. Results showed while most students said they devoted most of their reading time to academic reading, students actually spend a majority of their time reading online, specifically within social networks.
“A lot of them said they didn’t spend time reading for pleasure because they spend a lot of time on the internet social networking with things like Facebook, Twitter or chatting with friends,” Huang said.
Blacklock and Huang noted part-time jobs influenced the amount of time students spent reading and social networking, saying MSU is a campus where a large population of students juggle a job with their school load.
“We found that when reading for pleasure, students were influenced greatly by social media and what someone would suggest to them on things such as Facebook,” Blacklock said. “If someone would say, ‘You’ve really got to read The Hunger Games,’ or something of that nature, those endorsements were really powerful in influencing what students were willing to read and wanting to read.”
Huang believes college professors should be more aware of how reading habits have changed among college students and the way technology can be integrated into lectures, citing most students not only use social media leisurely, but also as an academic resource.
“There wasn’t an implication of teachers looking into these various social media avenues for engaging students in reading,” he said. “(The students) are very interested in (social media) and participate in it. It would be up to the instructor or the professor to seek ways to actively engage students in that kind of learning.”
Despite the impact technology has played in changing college students’ reading habits, Blacklock stressed the importance of the professor in shaping habits as well.
“Our findings also suggested that the teacher still makes the difference in students reading, and what they’re reading,” Blacklock said. “Regardless of whatever we’re doing in the classroom, social or not, it’s a powerful testimony to faculty members engaging with whatever they want their students to read and purposely setting that out there.”
Blacklock said students indicated via interview if professors were really enthused and engaged with whatever reading they were encouraging the students to do, students claimed to be more likely to read them.
“I think the social media and classroom approaches are still really important to get students interested in reading,” he said.
Blacklock said the hours students spent on internet reading ranked higher than academic and extra curricular reading, but academic was surprisingly close behind.
“If we as faculty can look at ways to combine academic reading within a social network, then it becomes a much more powerful tool for supporting what we want students to do. We want them to explore academic reading and how they perceive the world and to think deeper about the things we’re teaching. If we can find ways to integrate those two things, then they’re supporting each other.”
Since the completion of their study, Blacklock and Huang have had two papers published on their research, as well as a third in the works focused more on students who want to become teachers.
Huang noted their research has reached colleagues at bigger universities like the University of Texas in Austin and even Harvard University.
“Representatives from both schools said they were not surprised by our findings,” Huang said. “They’ve all noticed students using social media and technology more in the classroom.”
Blacklock hopes their presentation at the Faculty Forum Series will encourage faculty to continue the trend of listening to and supporting each other’s research.
“The series is one of those things that I hope we can continue to use to encourage faculty to present at and to attend,” he said. “It provides a venue for sharing ideas where we can collaborate and work together, and maybe start other research projects.”