Assignment #1: Read the article, The impact of Using Blogs on College Students' Reading Comprehension and Learning Motivation, and write a reflection.
Reading motivation is a large part of the driving force that help students to concentrate on their positive or negative opinions about reading. Learners who read for pleasure usually employ approaches to help themselves comprehend much better. The problem here is that young adults in the digital age are devoting more time to accessing digital-media information than information from traditional printed texts. Therefore, the authors’ posits that this change has been one of the factors that correlated with young adults’ negative reading achievement. They further went on to explain that this habitual multitasking behavior that is brought upon them from digital media information has contributed to short attention span, reduced engagement in sophisticated reading tasks, lower reading scores and the lower comprehension abilities.
To address these problems of eroding reading and writing skills in young adults and college student higher education institutions use reading diagnostic assessments (placement tests) to determine whether or not first-year college students have the required reading skills for successful standard entry level college courses. Furthermore, they are creating developmental reading classes where students learn various strategies and techniques to achieve academic success through extensive reading and writing assignments. As great as this may seem, the problem still existed because little has been done to examine whether or not developmental readers prefer interacting with digital texts, whether or not the readers demonstrate superior comprehension skills through the use of dynamic new media technologies, whether or not reading in a multimedia environment requires many different types of literacy skills, and whether or not college reading professors are ready to adopt digital text in their courses.
With all these questions in mind a variety of theoretical stances have been studied, but the author postulate the use of the 3D model, which suggests that educators should focus on three dimensions of literacy technology learning: operational, cultural, and critical dimensions. They believe that the operational dimension concerns the competence of using a language system and operating computer and network technology to read and write; while the cultural dimension involves the use of technologies to make meanings in authentic social contexts; and the critical dimension focuses on optimizing or assessing technology to support and exercise critical thinking. Moreover, they believe that using blogs, wikis, digital video, concept maps, and Google Earth, were all great ways to delve into this theory and exercise new literacies in supporting college reading instruction. The reason they preferred blogs was because it has greater flexibility, and offer a richer learning environment than traditional course-management systems. Moreover, it enhances social interaction, provide a channel to build a sense of community, strengthen communication skills, and helps with writing for a real audience.
According to authors HUI-YIN HSU AND SHIANGKWEI WANG the solution to this issue is that developmental reading professors should recognize the existing challenges posed by and faced by the underachieving college freshman, they should explore pedagogies that encourage students to improve their reading performance through technology, they should give students the opportunity to practice new-literacies skills,and should devise various strategies for using multimedia resources that maintain student interest after the novelty of a given technology wears off.
In conclusion, because motivation is one of the key factors to assist learners’ reading comprehension. Educators needs to find and use whatever strategies or pedagogies will help them connect college learning with students’ technology-saturated lives. In this way, our higher education systems will better prepare college students to succeed in the twenty first century work forces. Teachers should go beyond their traditional roles by providing opportunities for their learners to become motivated and substantially improve their reading comprehension proficiency.
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