Understanding Student Slide Reading Patterns During the Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures all across the world, and lots of students have shifted from conventional classrooms to online learning. With the help of ICT technologies nowadays, learning online can be more effective in a number of ways. However, most of the online learning environments without instructors' attention may result in different learning patterns compared to the traditional face-to-face classroom. In this paper, we aimed at detecting the slide reading behaviors of the students by analyzing operational event logs from a digital textbook reader for a lecture offered in our university. We compared reading patterns between traditional face-to-face lectures and hybrid online lectures, our results show that online lectures lead to more off-task behaviors. Our analysis provides a rich understanding of e-book reading and informs design implications for online learning during the pandemic. The findings can also be used to improve the instruction designs and learning strategies.