Our recent post on “How readable are food recipes” got the most views from readers over several days and still counting. I had not expected such interest in a popular application of readability measures. Before the weekend, a social science colleague told me that reading Devcompage informed him about the existence of readability tests and that perhaps the instructional materials of the university should be assessed for reading ease.
That got me to rethink the readability of Devcompage. Apart from the number of words, number of sentences and polysyllables, using larger font sizes, san serif fonts, and having a lot of white space contribute to the readability of a page design. This we learned in undergrad journalism courses. Experts says that larger font sizes, san serif fonts (like Arial Century Gothic, Verdana, etc.) and having a lot of white space contribute to readability. Sans-serifs are fonts that don’t have serifs. They look more modern and are more readable than serifs because they are simpler.
Once I approached the late Gerry Gil, a wordsmith, who had a Ph.D. from Stanford University, to ask which was more readable — Times Roman or Arial. Gerry said that while the rule says san serif fonts are easier to read, it really is a matter of familiarity.
The new theme of Devcompage is an attempt to enhance its readability. Let me know your comments.
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January 21, 2008 at 11:45 am
Efren B. Saz
Hi Moni, after our conversation, I seriously thought that instructional materials that are issued in print or electronically should undergo serious/rigorous tests such as readability and accuracy, etc. before they are approved for use by the university. As a member of the committee to screen IMs I have some misgivings about just making comments on the merits of the materials without those objective tests. The committee can do its work with professional help from people who know. (Of course this means more expenses and staff work and I’m not suggesting that you do it although we could very well profit from your expertise). This is very important for those taking extramural courses and undergrads who have basic difficulties with the English language. Thanks a lot.
January 22, 2008 at 9:32 am
Monina Escalada
Thanks Efren for your insightful comment. I have sent an email to our university colleagues inviting them to react to your comment or suggest alternative ways to improve our instructional materials. I hope that it will set off a meaningful online debate that could spark new ideas that will help the new university administration.
January 22, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Jojo Agot
Ma’am Moni, I have a lengthy comment about readability but since it’s longer than your post, I sent it directly to your mail.
Let me just say that I completely agree with the font and layout aspect of readability and i have a personal story to back up my claim.
January 23, 2008 at 2:16 am
Monina Escalada
Here’s Jojo’s comment which he sent my email. I exercised my blog moderator’s liberties to post it here …
I remember the course syllabi we used in college. Most of them were printed on cheap, gray/brown paper and some parts weren’t even readable. I remember that even if I was so interested in the subject, I didn’t feel like studying them most of the time because i got too distracted with the appearance. Of course I understand the economic considerations in printing but I agree that spacing, fonts (can i add color here?) and white spaces are important factors in readability.
Case in point: my personal experience. I’ve always hated Math when I was a student because I used to think it was the most boring subject in the whole wide world. I am not very proud of the grades I got and until now, I still wish I put a little more effort. I graduated believing that was the end of it, that Math is forever beyond my reach.
Five years later, after I resigned from the ministry and I desperately needed to get away for a while, I applied for a teaching position in the United States (pursuant to the No Child Left Behind Act of the US) but I needed to be certified before I can begin processing my documents. The exam included, among other things, statistics, geometry, higher algebra, and trigonometry. Time to make a choice, whether to turn back or give Math my one last shot.
I chose to pursue the application so I started studying Number Sense, decimals, fractions, etc. I felt stupid learning the basics again and I was ashamed of myself because I can’t believe what I was finding out about my Math level.
Here’s the big difference though: I studied American edition of elementary and high school books complete with colored illustrations and catchy page designs. When the algebra problem was about apples and oranges, there were colored pictures of ripe apples and oranges. I know this sounds so elementary but I am very sure it made my learning easier.
Few months later, my younger brother took college algebra 2 (same level i was studying at the moment) so I tried using his books. After an hour, I felt so frustrated with the way the lessons and computations were presented, not to mention the page design and the lack of colored illustrations that I was getting used to. It seemed like publishers of college textbooks were making Math a lot more complicated than necessary, I mean, if there was a way of simplifying the presentation, why do they always make it look harder?
I took the exam last September and to my surprise, I only got one wrong answer in Math. I can’t believe I scored better in Math than in English and World History, although I always thought they were my favorite subjects even after I finished college.
I passed the exam. I am one of the eighty out of 6000 Filipino applicants who passed and now I have the license to teach in all the States where American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) is recognized. (The only problem now is the almost half million pesos needed to process visa requirements and all those legal stuff).
The funny thing about it is how page design, colors, spacing, and yes, fonts, made a lot of difference in my learning. I know this sounds so simplistic for some but when I think of how these factors improved my scores, I think I earned the right to say that maybe this would work to many people out there.
I am guessing that sometimes academicians forget that learning is not just about the compelling nature of the subject matter but also on the “feel good” factor the students are getting when they look at the materials. I mean, for starters, maybe we should use this “feel good” trick on students until they “get hooked” with the subject that they would want to study it without catchy visuals. After all, we are all aware that most students don’t really study what they need to study but what they “feel like studying.” And so the challenge for teachers and academicians is to make them want to study by improving the way syllabi are written.
Also, when I was in college, I used to judge the interest level of the class based on the penmanship of the instructor. I know this is way offbeat (and outrageously ridiculous) but I am just pointing out that students are illogically whimsical and the best educator, I think, is the one who covers all the bases in order to maximize student learning.
Of course I am not suggesting that we go back to making “elementary-ish” illustrations for college students but maybe something can be done with handouts and course syllabi, which reminds me by the way, that of all the syllabi and handouts I got in college, only the Devcom department used neat, white, S-20 paper. I used to think that maybe devcom instructors used S-20 to offset the difficulty of the subject matter. Now I know better.
Thank you Ma’am Moni.
January 23, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Derek Alviola
I enjoyed browsing through the recent comment of Mr. Jojo Agot and what can I say? I highly agree with what he said. Sometimes, people learn because of the way things are presented, may it be a reading material or a lecture. There is a need to produce materials that could spark student interest.
It is, therefore, a challenge for every teacher to come up with innovative instructional materials to encourage and facilitate student learning. A website or web log (blog), considering it’s interactive features, is definitely a good example.
The young generation is the technologically savvy sector of our society. With the advent of new media and technologies, the attention of the new generation is difficult to capture. Teachers compete with other forms of media in educating the youth which makes teaching an even harder profession.
Introducing new forms of IMs may actually be the answer to our deteriorating educational quality in the country. But of course, this will require increasing Internet access to both faculty and students especially that not all departments in the university are wired.
January 23, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Jojo Agot
I completely agree with Derek. In fact, I’ve read somewhere that our teaching methods should catch up with the latest technological developments around us or else we will find ourselves in the losing end in competing for students’ attention.
It would be necessary to point out here that kids in this generation can watch hundreds, maybe thousands of images in rapid succession on MTV and still get what they mean. In sharp contrast, our classrooms give us, what, three or five pages of badly written, colorless flip charts in a 50-minute class? Who’s kidding who?
Just a thought…
January 24, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Rotacio Gravoso
Jojo Agot presented the sad state of our learning materials in the Philippines so eloquently. Well, to add to the problem on poor readability and understandability is the problem on inaccuracy. Last school year, we had noticed a lot of inaccuracies in the textbooks used by our children. Good that the publisher was so quick in providing our school with the corrections.
I was sent to a conference on book development for Region 8 organized by the Book Development Board. An issue raised by the participants was on poor quality of the textbook. One grandmother related to the delegates that “subtract” in her grandchild’s textbook was spelled as “subtrak”.
Why is this happening? A professor from UP Tacloban said that this is because of so much politics involved in textbook development.
As for the instructional materials development program at VSU, yes, I agree that much remains to be done. The evaluation shouldn’t just focus on format and grammar but should be more on substance.
January 25, 2008 at 12:17 am
Jojo Agot
Sir Rotach, that “subtrak” thing is both sad and hilarious. If I didn’t know you I would have thought it was a joke.
And now that you mentioned substance, I’m reminded that I have a niece who is already studying mammals in pre-school here in Manila. I was shocked when my sister in law asked me about mammals and reptiles. Are they going to introduce binomial nomenclature in first grade then?
I find this very outrageous. Isn’t there an office that looks into these irregularities in our schools? I mean, I wonder if pre-school is under DepEd supervision…
January 25, 2008 at 1:50 am
Monina Escalada
Alleba.com (http://politics.alleba.com/2006/09/08/a-troubling-filipino-textbook-for-college-freshmen/) pointed out a Filipino textbook for college freshmen titled “FILIPINO 1 AKADEMIKONG FILIPINO TUNGO SA EFEKTIV NA KOMUNIKASYON” which, according to the writer, seems to be an English book, only Filipinized as it uses words such as “varayti,” “varyasyon,” “perspektiv,” “definisyon,” and “morfoloji,” among others. Page 67 is titled as “2001 Revisyon ng Alfabeto at Patnubay sa Ispeling ng Wikang Filipino: Mga Tuntunin.”
I wonder if our college students have noticed textbook and teacher inaccuracies and did something about it. The list of errors might be long and it could spin off another “ABNKKBSNPLAKO?! – mga kuwentong chalk ni Bob Ong”.
January 28, 2008 at 9:35 am
Nelfa M. Glova
I would like to add my perspective on the state and quality of VSU’s IMs drawn from a personal experience as a graduate student four years ago.
When choosing subjects for my minor, I was practically drawn to one course “Communication in Extension” thinking there might be a lot of things worth picking from it to add up to my devcom learnings. But to my consternation, when I browsed through the Study Guide, and as the semester progressed, most of the communication strategies tackled in the course were already obsolete–very mummified polemics–that my devcom professors did not bother to use them in their research. Most of the topics were still on Laswell, Schramm, Berlo while my devcom classes were already battling with “synergestic and convergent” theories of the communication process. I had to explain to a class composed of extension workers and agricultural technicians that there are more exciting and effective developments in communicating messages to communities now (to the extent of annoying half of the class who refused to grow too). And it got me thinking, “if these are the communication strategies taught in class, no wonder our extension workers are not doing much progress in reaching farmers; our farmers are not doing much progress in learning from our extensionists either.”
I agree with Sir Efren that our IMs should be subjected to rigorous review not only for readability and accuracy but also for their “timeliness”/relevance. Communication scientists have already tinkered with old ideas, fine-tuned here and there , to improve communication strategies.
Let us demand for updated IMs. Let us not make the ideas we proposed to teach our students as yellowed as the time-beaten pages of our manuals.
January 25, 2009 at 4:10 pm
mary jane cortes
hello madam,
good day to you.