04.14.06

Study skills in the electronic age

By Mike Frontiero
VCU School of Education
April 14, 2006

The last time a comprehensive study on student study skills was conducted, a typewriter was what you called a desktop and a library card catalog was your Internet.

Much has changed since 1984, when D.B. Rogers released his “Study/Reading Skills Checklist.” The checklist has been a valuable assessment tool for teachers to determine the variety of study skills used by their students, but it does not reflect behaviors and tactics for study used in the computer age.

“The use of technology in schools has increased exponentially in the last 20 years,” said Dr. Joan A. Rhodes, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education. “It is time for a new study skills assessment instrument that reflects the 21st century and computer-based study tactics,”

Dr. Rhodes, assistant professor Valerie J. Robnolt, Ph.D., and professor emerita Judy S. Richardson, Ph.D., are conducting the first major assessment of the role today’s technology plays in how students study.

According to National Center of Educational Statistics, the percentage of schools with Internet access increased from three percent in 1994 to 87 percent in 2001.

“In an educational environment in which there is more of an emphasis on electronic texts, educators must know and teach appropriate study skills for the 21st century,” said Dr. Robnolt.

The Study Skills survey asks students to think generally about whether they use a particular skill/strategy, and how they use it with both electronic and paper materials. Like Rogers’ checklist, this survey is not meant to be exhaustive, but to stimulate a student to think about ways to study, and to help teachers know where to concentrate study tactics instruction.

As they conduct the study, the authors have found that their own concept of study has not changed over time, but the way they study has.

“We still need to study, and do so regularly,” said Dr. Richardson. “Yet, we each have found ourselves adapting to an electronic literacy environment in both our work and personal lives. Our study behaviors and tactics now include track editing for revising and responding to written papers, insertion of electronic comments into documents, highlighting, and writing remarks and notes directly on electronic copies.”

Results of the study are expected later this year.

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