Malaysian Journal of Distance Education 17(2), 6781 (2015)
© Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2016
Online Survey of Reading Strategies (OSORS): Students’
Online Reading in Academic Context
Zailani Jusoh
1*
and Liza Abdullah
2
1
Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Malaysia
2
International Islamic University Malaysia
*zailani@unisza.edu.my
Published online: 29 August 2016
To cite to this article: Zailani Jusoh and Liza Abdullah. 2015. Online survey of reading
strategies (OSORS): Students’ online reading in academic context. Malaysian Journal of
Distance Education 17(2): 67–81. doi: 10.21315/mjde2015.17.2.5
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.21315/mjde2015.17.2.5
Abstract
Academic success greatly depends on the ability of students to capitalise the information
available at their disposal through improved reading skills. However, the emergence of
digital texts has transformed the nature of academic reading as online reading is reported
to be different from traditional printed reading. As such, this paper which is based on a
study conducted on students in a particular university in Malaysia, was written to
investigate the extent of the use of strategies when reading online, in an academic setting
and also to investigate whether differences in the use of the strategies between students in
different field of studies exist. Findings suggest that students are all users of strategies
and field of studies has no bearing on the type of overall strategies preferred. However,
significant difference was found for support strategies. One of the implications is the need
for class instruction in raising students’ awareness on the importance of varied usage of
strategies when reading materials online.
Keywords: online survey of reading strategies (OSORS), online reading strategies,
university students, academic discipline
Introduction
Reading plays a pivotal role in one’s education as through reading,
knowledge is acquired and thus making it a critical component across all
disciplines. In fact, all formal education are rely on this skill to progress. It
accounts for a great component of students’ academic life. Reading is even