Developing Evaluation Metrics for Active Reading Support

Reading academic literature in digital formats is becoming more and more of a normalcy for students, but designers of reading support tools do not share common, metrics for evaluating such tools. This paper introduces our work in developing an evaluation form which we call the aRSX (active Reading Support IndeX). The aRSX-form is a quantitative means for evaluating whether a specific software or hardware tool supports active, academic reading in a way that resonates with personal user experience and learning preferences-in other words; whether the tool is practical and pleasant to use for the student who consumes academic literature. The paper presents the first and second iterations of the aRSX evaluation survey based on a preliminary exploratory experiment with 50 university students. The paper also describes how the evaluation form can be developed and used by designers of reading support tools.