At the university level, who gives a damn who's reading the text?  They are paying to be there and they are grown adults. I would think they could figure out how best to study by themselves.  Now high school or elementary school I would understand.

I can't remember the last time a story like this started with "We're doing this with evil intentions."

Raharu: And?

It's not like teachers haven't always asked questions about readings that were designed to expose students who hadn't read.  This will change nothing.  Students will still read as little as possible to get by, and the clever students will be able to BS their way through class like we all did, and the teachers' pets will still read every word just like always, and the slackers will STILL not care if they get bad grades.

Literally nothing about school will change because of this.

Abe Vigoda's Ghost: Adrian Guardia, a Texas A&M instructor in management, took notice the other day of a student who was apparently doing well. His quiz grades were solid, and so was what CourseSmart calls his "engagement index." But Mr. Guardia also saw something else: that the student had opened his textbook only once.

So he's either cheating, or the textbook is worthless. I'm guessing the textbook is worthless.

"It was one of those aha moments," said Mr. Guardia... I knew I had to reach out to him to discuss his studying habits."

Why? If he's doing well in the class, obviously his studying habits are working for him. How about reaching out to the students that are having real problems.

I had plenty of classes in which I did well and never cracked the book. Chiefly general ed stuff inhabited by the 75% of students who were lamebrains and incapable of thinking logically or structuring a coherent sentence. A talking to about my study habits like he's proposing would have resulted in me writing a script that opened the book and paged thru it for hours on end until it looked like my every waking hour was spent reading it. Let's see what he'd make of that.

Once you actually reach higher-education, you're on your own.  Your teachers shouldn't have to babysit you into reading all the material intently, highlighting the passages that are important, etc.  You're an adult now, and if you choose to be lazy and fail, that's your prerogative.

Right now, I teach composition for freshman international students at the U of Illinois, and if they don't do the assignments I give them, they get a 0.  Plain and simple.  When that happens for the first time in a semester, that student realizes I'm serious about their grades, and it usually shapes them up.

Used to work at nuclear fuel processing facility and their were safety texts people had to read annually.

People would just click "read" without reading it so they put a timer on it that would give them a nasty message if they clicked read in under 5 minutes.

So people would go grab coffee and chat whilst they waited for timer to hit 5 minutes.

People will always try to cheat the system.

Kids will play video games and occasionally click next page.

Heh.  I just had a Snow Crash flashback to whatshername's mom working for the government and tailoring her reading fingerprint to conform with standard reading patterns.

I see a market for apps to counter these Orwellian strategies. Just fire up the app that flips through The Odyssey at 2 ppm. Wanna (not) read faster? Set it to 3 ppm.

"A million dollars Jerry! A million dollars!"

ScouserDuck: Bah. I always read every reading assignment I was supposed to so all these other kids should too. It's about time they're held accountable. Although, I will say I don't get the headline. What's the connection between this story and reality TV?

Please be trolling.  Please.

WhippingBoy: Next thing you know, they're going to be monitoring exams to make sure that no one cheats! What's this world coming to???

Where am I, Russia???

Book reads YOU.

I'm pretty sure most teachers can tell which students read the book anyways.