Writing for Internet readers

Writing must be tailored to the medium. You would not publish an essay on a billboard or a short slogan as a newspaper article. Writing for the Internet must be compatible with Internet reading style, and, if we are writing for students, their characteristics.

Jakob Nielsen asks the question How Little do Users Read? in a recent column. Nielsen describes a study by Harald Weinreich and his colleagues. They instrumented the Web browsers of 25 users and collected data on their browsing habits, as shown here:


Even for first time visits to a site, half of the page-stay times were 12 seconds or less.

Nielsen analyzed the same data further. He removed very short pages (probably error messages) and very long views (probably unattended browsers) and found the following correlation between the number of words on a page and the time spent reading it:

Next he asked what percent of the words on a page could have been read by someone reading at 250 words per minute:

As we see, a user might be able to read most of a very short page, but will not typically take the time to read more than a portion of a longer page.

Of course, different users have different reading habits. The posts on this blog may seem long, but they are written for a somewhat scholarly reader. But, as educators, we should probably keep things short and teach our students to write concisely for the Internet.

The Beloit College list of the characteristics of incoming freshmen

The latest version of the Beloit College Mindset list of characteristics of freshman students just came out. The class of 2012

has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are “wired” and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.

It is a multicultural, politically correct and “green” generation that has hardly noticed the threats to their privacy and has never feared the Russians and the Warsaw Pact.

A few of my favorites -- regarding technology, US society, and the cold war -- from the list of 60 characteristics are:

• Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
• Personal privacy has always been threatened.
• Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.
• Michael Millken has always been a philanthropist promoting prostate cancer research.
• There have always been gay rabbis.
• Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.
• Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.
• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.

Does Internet style reading change our brains?

We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.
Marshall McLuhan

Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.
Friedrich Nietzsche


Nicholas Carr published an article entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid? in which he discusses his and other's inability to patiently read long, complex articles and books. Web documents are typically short and linked to other documents, and we often jump away from an article after skimming or partially reading it.

Carr feels that reading this way has altered his brain structure, which explains his impatience when reading long documents. If Carr's hypothesis is true, today's students, who have grown up using the Internet and Web, will not learn well from conventional books and journal articles.

Carr's article spurred quite a bit of online debate and commentary. For example, this Salon article with several pages of comments.

Are our students reading habits really different than their parent's generation? Is this due to the Web or to other media like fast-cutting, MTV-style video? If we are becoming hard-wired skimmers instead of careful readers, what is gained and what is lost?

Role-based collaborative writing using a wiki

The following is an excerpt from an interview of Stewart Mader, who describes his use of a wiki for chemistry lab reports at Brown University. The role-based collaborative writing exercises benefited both students and teachers.

When I taught a chemistry lab years ago, I used a wiki to have students write collaborative lab reports. [Before the wiki, I had] 30 students in a lab where each student does an experiment and writes a report. You get 30 reports and 30 introductions and 30 methods and materials and 30 conclusions and so forth. Grading and evaluating that work becomes more about just getting through the pile on your desk than about really providing students in-depth feedback.

And for the students, I don't think they learn as much that way because they're focused on getting the thing done and turned in on time, and they're just repeating the same process over and over.

So one of the ways I used the wiki was to take a group of 30 students, split them up into six groups of five, and as they did an experiment, have each of those groups work much more like they would in the professional world. Teams would work on research projects, and when they wrote their report, each student was responsible for a different section. Student A would write the Abstract, Student B would write the Materials and Methods, and so on. For Experiment 2, roles changed, and Student B wrote the Abstract, and Student A wrote Materials and Methods.

The outcome for me was instead of getting 30 reports, I was now getting six reports, so I was able to spend much more time on those reports, reading what the students had written and giving them a lot more constructive, substantive feedback. For the students, they weren't slogging through with these repetitions every week. They were now trying out writing different parts of the report. Obviously, you're going to be stronger with some sections than another, so that means one week it might be a little easier you and that's fine because next week, you're going to work on the section that's a little more difficult and you are going to be able to really focus and refine your technique on that.

That's just one example, but that's the kind of thing a wiki can do in teaching. It can really allow instructors to focus on fewer, more in-depth assignments or products that are results of highly collaborative work by students.

The other benefit that comes out of that, especially with group work, is you can see what students are doing as they are doing it.... You can help students to keep a project on course towards success, versus derailing because there are problems in the group that you don't know about until the end of the project, when they come to you with a substandard result and start complaining about how members didn't pull their own weights.

Instead, you know what is going on, and you can see from the interaction they are having and the contribution of material in the wiki. If you see one person is noticeably absent from any contribution, you can talk to that person and say "Hey, are you having trouble with the tool, or are you having trouble with the assignment?" You can fix something like that in the first or second week, versus the twelfth week of the semester, when hope is lost.

This excerpt is from the The Power of Wikis in Higher Ed by Linda L Briggs.

Web skills are necessary for work

Since Kemeny and Kurtz introduced the notion of computer literacy, there has been a dual emphasis on job skills and concepts. The following two quotes suggest that Internet skills are needed in the workplace.

Patty Morrison, Executive VP and CIO, Motorola:

The next big thing for my business will be ... the explosion of Web 2.0 and the consumerization of IT. Organizations will need to completely rethink how they will provide end-user services to an incoming workforce that has more technical capability at home/school than the enterprise can offer.

Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, Microsoft:

Over the past ten years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the web is at the center of our experiences – experiences delivered not just through the browser but also through many different devices including PCs, phones, media players, game consoles, set-top boxes and televisions, cars, and more.

How much programming?

Slashdot has a discussion of whether programming should be part of a science education. I cannot imagine the answer being anything but "yes" for science or engineering students, but what about majors in the arts and humanities or other professions? What IT skills does, say, an art history or literature major, need for work? What concepts do they need to be at home in the modern world?

A table of skills and concepts for various students

Computer literacy is comprised of many skills and concepts, but they are not all appropriate for every student. This table lists some skills and concepts that might be appropriate for three groups of student. It could be extended and used as a checklist and an index to notes and exercises on each topic.