Margy MacMillan, 2012 Nexen Scholar: Making Connections When Reading Scholarly Articles

Librarian Margy MacMillan’s project in the 2012 Nexen Scholars Program investigated how students read and connected to scholarly articles. In a class on reading articles within a research methods class, she collected the connections students noted while reading a part of an article. Using a phenomenographic approach, she saw that the connections illuminated how students were reading at different parts of the text – at times connecting only with the words and at times with the deeper meaning. The work suggested several ways that instructors can support students to read more deeply and integrate knowledge from readings more successfully.

You can read more about Margy’s findings here:
MacMillan, M. (2014). Student connections with academic texts: A phenomenographic study of reading. Teaching in Higher Education, 19(8), 943-954.

and an overview here:
Rhem, J. (2014), How Are They Reading? Could We Show Them a Better Way?. Ntl Teaching & Learning Forum, 24: 6–8. doi: 10.1002/ntlf.30011