Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 82

ARTICLE #6 | 83 JADE | 82 ARTICLE #6 Title Digital Native First Year Law Students and their Reading Skills in a Post Reading World Authors Fabienne Emmerich & Ash Murphy DOI http://doi.org/10.21252/ KEELE-0000034 Contact [email protected] Keywords Digital natives; Reading; Collaborative learning. Abstract In this paper we draw on our reflective experiences of introducing and facilitating reading development exercises in a first year Administrative Law module. We argue that students of 2018 can be understood as digital natives who display an almost exclusive preference for digital reading. We build on the emerging literature that challenges the assumption that (law) students do not need support with their reading skills. Our main conclusion is that we should support our students’ development of their reading skills as a craft that necessitates different tools for different spaces: screen or typographical (paper). We propose that this entails a three stage approach: first, to have conversations with students about reading in different spaces, the particular nature of screen space versus typographical space and the type of texts that lend themselves to the digital or the physical environment. Second, to help students develop their skills in working with and take ownership of academic texts in paper form. To achieve this we will further develop collective effort reading sessions combined with a paper reading pack of the key readings that each student will own. And finally, we aim to continue to engage students on their platform in digital social technology. Twitter is a great example of a modern technology platform readily accessible from any smart phone, which provides its users with text-based information in no more detail than 140 or 280 characters. Instagram similarly focuses on few words, placing pictographic information at the forefront of the apparatus. These two prominent technologies are just the tip of the digital iceberg and many more exist to influence the way people in their everyday lives engage in reading. Where students are concerned this appears to affect their ability to deep read. Introduction We draw on our reflective experiences of introducing and facilitating reading development exercises in a first year administrative law module. A reading orientated module, we have begun to reflect on our experiences in the classroom with a focus on students’ reading skills and their attitudes towards reading academic texts. Our initial reflection is that over the past three academic years many of our students have begun to retreat from reading. This is of course a terrifying given the nature of higher education, and particularly law, as reading centric. In this paper we build and expand on research that challenges the assumption that (law) students do not need support with their reading skills (Taylor et al. 2001). The argument is twofold: first, the students of DIGITAL NATIVE FIRST YEAR LAW STUDENTS AND THEIR READING SKILLS IN A POST READING WORLD 2018 should be understood as digital natives who display an almost exclusive preference for digital reading (Prensky, 2001). Second, we must adapt and alter our teaching techniques in order to meet the digital native on ground that they feel comfortable as well as expose them to reading on paper. Our main conclusion is that we need to focus on our students’ development of their reading skills as a craft that necessitates different tools for different spaces: screen or typographical (paper). The Problem As lecturers we unwittingly adopt an assumption that everyone coming to study is in possession of a comprehensive set of reading skills (Hermida 2009). This assumption is rooted in two factors. First our own experience of reading shapes the way we expect others to read. As academics reading is staple. We spend hours at a time examining books and articles. Consequently we assume that anyone entering our world should have an equal propensity for reading. Second our assumption is based on othering the students, “us and them”. “Us” being the generation that on the whole began their education reading and writing; “them” being the generation that began their education swiping and typing. An exponential acceleration of technology in the past decade has seen the smart phone become the primary source of ICT (Ofcom 2015). With 90% of sixteen to twenty-four year olds owning one, it has become unrealistic, and regretfully short sighted, to believe that those born into this digital world have not experienced alterations to the way they read (Ofcom 2015). The Texts It is unfair to suggest a reading deficit among current students (Colgan et al 2017). They do continue to read. But the manner in which they read is no longer the same as past generations. A book, once the primary platform, is now taking a back seat to the different ways people, and particularly current students, read in their everyday lives (Jewitt 2005). While reading still takes place it is often a form of hyper or express reading. The volume of research on reading practices focuses on web-based texts or hypertexts rather than academic texts (Rose, 2011). Hypertexts are ubiquitous in our daily lives from web content to app content from mundane tasks to entertainment. Carusi explains 'that the reading practices of hypertext readers become increasingly fragmentary, that they are easily distracted by surface features: their response to the text is more general, less specific and emotionally engaged than that of linear readers' (2006 cit in Rose, 2011: 516).