Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

54 Studying online 
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ability to read efectively is likely to fall. Listening to instrumen-
tal music through noise-cancelling headphones could cut out the 
irrelevant noises and help you to concentrate, as well as improve 
your comprehension of what you are reading. Tere is more detail 
about using background music to avoid distractions in Chapter 10. 
PRINT OUT LONG ITEMS OF READING 
As suggested in Chapter 2, a printer can be handy for you when 
studying online and at a distance. At a traditional campus-based 
university, you would be able to pop into the library to get print-
ed books if that is what you prefer to read. Plus, university li-
braries have banks of printers and copiers available so that you 
can print things out quickly. When you are at home, studying 
alone, you don’t have easy access to such facilities. However, the 
library and its facilities are an essential aspect of university life. 
Indeed, on most campuses, you will fnd the main library is cen-
trally located, with more specialist libraries available within each 
of the schools or faculties of the university. Whatever you might 
think about the value of digital documents, students love print-
ed items. Every year in one of the modules that I teach about 
the digital economy, I get students to complete a poll about the 
books they are reading. I’ve been doing this for the past 15 years. 
Each time I run the little survey, I ask students whether they 
prefer to read ebooks or printed books. Te results have been 
consistent and have shown no sign of changing. Nearly 90 per 
cent of students prefer printed books to digital ones. Almost all 
the students who prefer digital books have been those who have 
another frst language, as English is their second or third lan-
guage. For them the digital books are better as they can more 
easily get portions of text translated online to help with their 
understanding. For students with English as their frst language, 
printed books are the much-preferred option. However, if you 
are studying at a distance, you are probably provided with eb-
ooks and other digital documents. Other than buying the books 
yourself, the only option would be to print out elements of your 

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