Metacognitive online reading strategies and navigation patterns among foundation students

Abstract

The digital revolution has led to a shift towards digital reading materials in education, with many students opting for online reading due to its convenience and countless information sources. However, due to the nature of online reading, readers have encountered different reading experiences. This study aimed to determine the awareness of metacognitive online reading strategies among foundation students in a public university and to explore in detail the strategies that they used and their navigation patterns when reading online. How the strategies support their navigations when they read online was analysed. This study utilised qualitative priority mixed method research and it was based on the explanatory sequential design where it started with a quantitative data collection and analysis and then followed by the qualitative phase. The Online Survey of Reading Strategies (OSORS) was used to assess 495 students' awareness of metacognitive online reading strategies. For the next phase of the study, screen observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted on 11 students. From the survey, it was found that in general, most students had high awareness of metacognitive online reading strategies but this was not necessarily indicators of real usage of them. From the interview, it was discovered that 30 out of 38 strategies in OSORS, were utilised by the students while four strategies that were commonly used by participants are not part of OSORS. Nevertheless, when looking at the number of strategies utilised by each individual participant, all of them in general used less than half of the strategies in OSORS. The observations revealed that different students had unique ways of navigating the internet and they were categorised into 4 patterns based on the model of navigation patterns by Juvina and Van Oostendorp (2006), which are content-based, laborious, divergent and flimsy. However, a new pattern emerged from this study where the participants had a unique navigation characteristic. From this study, it can be concluded that metacognitive online reading strategies do not directly determine the navigation patterns of students. However, those who utilised more strategies seemed to have a positive navigation behaviour which is a positive indicator to prove the importance of incorporating metacognitive instruction in the curriculum. Following the in-depth analysis and discussions based on the findings emerged, implications and recommendations are also presented in the study.