“It’s a lot to take in” - Undergraduate Experiences with Assigned Reading
Student perspectives are absolutely critical to engage with when we think about reading pedagogy. Reading, after all, is a deeply personal experience and reading experiences often emerge from formative educational experiences in elementary and secondary school settings. Smale's excellent article provides the data to demonstrate the complex landscape of student needs. I recommend that instructors take seriously students' stories in order to examine how they assign and design student reading assignments.
While time and motivation are cited in most studies as reasons that students may not complete their reading, few have explored the reasons why students may not have adequate time for their assigned course reading or why they may not feel motivated to complete it. Further, many studies of undergraduate reading involve research at primarily residential colleges and universities, and do not adequately consider the experiences of commuter students, who make up a large and growing percentage of undergraduates, or institutions with highly diverse, non-traditional student populations... What stands in the way of students completing their course reading, and how can faculty and staff support students’ academic reading practices? Students who do not complete their assigned reading may have difficulty completing their coursework; exploring the reasons that students do not do their reading can inform strategies to support their academic success.