Encouraging Students to Read: What Professors Are (and Aren't) Doing About It

Abstract

Reasons are examined as to why students are reluctant to complete assigned textbook readings on a timely basis. Prior research suggested that lack of student motivation, lack of student knowledge of effective study habits, competing demands on student time, and lack of congruency between student objectives for the course and professor objectives for students could be the cause. Our empirical research indicated that both the textbook and the professor can impact student willingness to complete assigned readings. Students (n=394) suggested that a good textbook be reasonably priced ($50 or less), concise (short chapters), loaded with great graphics, and easy to understand. Business faculty (n=77) shared ideas on how they encourage students to prepare for class by completing their assigned textbook reading. The authors divided the responses into one of two general categories: (1) requiring additional student preparation prior to class, or (2) incorporating in-class activities designed to measure the degree of student preparation. These responses were then categorized as reflections of professorial assumptions (Theory X or Theory Y) regarding their students. One author shared his success with the use of Thoughtful Intellectually Engaging Responses (TIERs) and Reading Logs. The authors conclude that an effective approach will require professors to develop course pedagogy that will attack multiple reasons for lack of preparation simultaneously so that we can reach all students who would otherwise remain unprepared. Suggestions on how to continue the dialog on this topic as well as suggestions for future research are provided.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 58 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.