Engaging students in completing assigned reading material, particularly textbooks, is a challenge faced by many college professors. Further, research has demonstrated student compliance is typically low with reading course textbooks. This study explores the impact of assigning content-specific books written for popular audiences and having…

This study explores the pedagogical effectiveness of assignments developed for a first-year composition course to encourage reflexive reading habits that can aid students in the writing process. Students in this course were asked to articulate the connections they found between multimodal texts of their own choosing and texts assigned by their…

This paper discusses my experiences taking a semester's worth of undergraduate courses in order to determine the literacy task demands placed on students in the classroom. It has been well documented that students struggle with literacy tasks when they enter college. My experiences indicated that part of this struggle might be because reading…