I’m reading an interesting paper by M. Julee Tanner that compares the cognitive aspect of digital vs. print delivery for book-length material. In summary, the printed book is not dead!

I’ve always thought the print medium (especially typeset by LaTeX) is far superior for learning and comprehension, but I figured this was my “old timer” ways (I’m 32). It seems I’m not the only one though:

Despite decades of work by computer and e-reader engineers and designers to improve the optics, display, and ease of navigation of virtual texts, readers still have a general preference for the print presentation, especially when it comes to longer, more challenging material.

The author states many good things print books have going for them, but the most interesting to me is the following quote:

[…] the greatest difference in metacognitive strategy was also found among the users of e-readers, in their reluctance to review previously read passages by virtually turning back pages. It seems that the perceived unwieldiness of screen-tapping to turn pages did negatively impact comprehension of expository texts on the e-reader platform (Margolin et al., 2013).
Since monitoring one’s understanding while reading, reviewing previously read material if necessary, underlining, and taking marginal notes are so vital to the comprehension of more challenging texts, it is important for students and educators to know how applicable these metacognitive strategies are to virtual texts.

Indeed, think about it—if you’re reading a complicated passage in a math book, wouldn’t you want to flip back and look at the equation which you saw five pages ago? In a printed book you could do that (you could in fact leave you finger on that spread and conveniently flip between the two pages). In a PDF read on the computer, it’s also somewhat passible to flip back (though a bit imprecisely), but on an eBook reader it’s not easy to do.

Learning math/physics (or other cognitively demanding material) from an eBook reader feels a bit like I’m placed in front of a slide deck: information comes, then it’s quickly taken away, leaving me in a disorganized state of mind.

Here’s the full reference: Tanner, M. J. (2014). Digital vs. print: Reading comprehension and the future of the book. SJSU School of Information Student Research Journal, 4(2). scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slissrj/vol4/iss2/