Karen Manarin, 2009 Nexen Scholar: Supporting Students' Reading

Karen Manarin, PhD, created a 2009 Nexen project examining how students read in a required first-year writing class. In particular, she was interested in learning more about the reading strategies students choose when they encounter different types of texts. She discovered that students rely on the same repertoire of strategies regardless of efficacy. She also discovered that having students write about the strategies they chose seemed to encourage students to experiment with different reading strategies. An article describing this research was published in Pedagogy and reviewed in Faculty Focus and the Teaching Professor.

This project changed Dr. Manarin's approach to teaching different courses. It also led to several other SoTL projects, including a collaborative book on critical reading in higher education.

“Becoming involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning has dramatically changed my teaching practice and my scholarship."

Her findings are published here:

Manarin, K. (2012). Reading value: Student choice in reading strategies. Pedagogy, 12(2), 281-297.

And reviewed here: