Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 88
ARTICLE #6 | 89
88 | JADE
DIGITAL NATIVE FIRST YEAR LAW STUDENTS AND
THEIR READING SKILLS IN A POST READING WORLD
FABIENNE EMMERICH & ASH MURPHY
Our main conclusion is that we should focus on our students’
development of their reading skills as a craft that necessitates different
tools for different spaces: screen or typographical. 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. 7
And finally, we aim to continue to engage students on their platform,
the digital social technology platform. Experimenting with Twitterfall
and discussing ways to introduce Instagram we are meeting the
students half way. It is our hope that in collaboration we can support
students to develop their reading skills and they can support us to
develop our teaching techniques.
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7. This may seem like going back in time. Based on our experience it is crucial
to give students physical copies, because many are reluctant to print out the
reading.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Angela Rhead for introducing us to the
structured reading retreats and for her support in the design and
delivery of the structured reading workshop. Her experience and
expertise has been invaluable. We would also like to thank Sen
Raj and Michael Fay for helping us deliver the structured reading
workshop in which 120 students participated. We would also like
to thank Hélène Tyrrell for her very helpful feedback following the
presentation of our paper at the Association of Law Teachers’ Annual
Conference 2018, Keele University, 26.03-27.03.