Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

You are not a “smooth eyes” 
If you have ever watched someone reading, you will have been sur-
prised that their eyes do not go smoothly across the page. Instead, 
as they move from left to right over the text, their eyes repeatedly 

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Reading online 47 
jump up and down. You might not be able to see how many times 
their eyes jerk around because each movement lasts for only about 
20 milliseconds. Tese jerky jumps are called 
saccades
, which is 
the French word for “jerks” and describes the movements very 
well indeed. Between these bursts of energy, the eyes settle on the 
text in what is known as a “fxation”. Ultimately, when we read, 
what we are doing is taking a series of individual “snapshots” as 
we jump along the text (Crowder and Wagner, 1992). Your eyes 
are doing a great deal of muscular activity when you read, which 
is partly why you can get tired quickly. Tis is an issue when study-
ing, as you will need to read a great deal of material. Te fact that 
your eyeballs will be doing plenty of bouncing around means that 
you have the potential for eye strain unless you take care. 
QUICK TIP: Pay close attention to the way you read online, as 
it can cause eyestrain and headaches if you do not have a plan 
for coping with digital reading. 
You listen as you read 
As you are reading this text, you can probably “hear” the words. Of 
course, you are not actually hearing the words unless you have the 
audiobook version. However, your brain doesn’t just process the 
text in the visual region at the back of your head. It also passes 
the text through something known as the “phonological loop”. 
Tat’s a fancy way of saying you are checking the sounds the words 
make. It means that if you come across a word you have never seen 
before, you can probably make sense of it from the sounds. How-
ever, this means your brain is now doing two activities at the same 
time. It is visually analysing the text and checking what it sounds 
like. As a result, your brain is using energy, and the depletion of 
your reserves can contribute to feeling tired. When you have been 
reading for a while, you will probably feel tired. Tat’s because 
your brain has done double the work. For some people, there is a 
third activity that contributes to helping you read and adds to the 

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