Tips for reading online
When reading online, you can sll apply the same acve reading techniques to ensure you get the
most for your studies. You might just need to make a few adjustments to help.
Avoid distractions
It sounds simple but avoiding distracons can make
online reading more producve. When reading on
screen we can be tempted to follow links, look up a
cited arcle or deviate o task. Shut other programmes
down while you are trying to read or use website
blockers like Cold Turkey or StayFocused to stop you
from surng the net.
Be prepared to take notes
Knowing why you are reading the document makes a
big dierence, for example is it wider reading to help
you understand a topic, research to provide supporng
evidence to an argument or an introducon before a
lecture to get an idea about what will be discussed.
Once you know why you are reading, you can apply the
right techniques. See Study Skills Guides: Reading for
academic purposes for more informaon about crical
reading techniques.
Whatever your reason for reading, have paper and pen
or a blank Word document ready to make notes. You
could use the Cornell method or your preferred
method, but make sure you are reading acvely:
idenfying key points, summarising content in your
own words and asking quesons about the text.
Set a time limit
Reading from a screen for long periods of me can
cause eye strain. Plan to read in short intervals, for
example read for 30 mins then take a 10-minute break.
During this break, get up, move about and look into the
distance to allow your eyes to relax.
Save documents into a different
format
Consider saving or downloading documents into a
format you can add notes to like PDF or word
documents. Highlight or add comments and quesons
to enable acve reading using apps like Xodo.
Clear things out regularly
Doing this, you can quickly accumulate a lot of
documents, pdfs, bookmarks, and saved items. Regular
maintenance can make it much easier to nd what you
are looking for, when you are looking for it. So, clear out
your bookmarks, delete PDFs that you don’t need or
add key references you want to keep into Endnote or
Zotero libraries so you can access them later. See
Endnote or Zotero online training guides for more info
about managing your references.
Apps to help online reading and note taking:
• Evernote is a useful tool to store notes, images, web links. The free version is usually enough for most people
but the web clipper add-on can be used to clip arcles or chunks of informaon that you nd online. Your
Evernote is searchable too so you can nd informaon you have saved quickly and easily.
• Pocket can be used to save items you want to read for later, for example, if you are reading a journal and
want to read a cited journal you can send the link to your pocket to read at another me.
• Google Keep allows you to make notes, audio recordings, save images and create to-do-lists which could be
useful to create digital notes.
• Xodo that lets you annotate, highlight and add images to pdf documents and work with other people on the
same document. Xodo works on desktop, mobile and online.
• ATbar is a browser tool that can help you customise how you interact with online material like ebooks.
Adapted from: Lumen (no date) Development English: Introducon to College Composion.
Available at: hps://courses.lumenlearning.com/vccs-enf102-17fa/chapter/text-online-reading-ps/ (Accessed: 24/04/2020).
