Whether it is for the purpose of class readings or research - the process of reading academic texts is more often than not a tedious and complex endeavour. Dense argumentation flows tend to be difficult to follow, different ideas and voices within the text blend into one another, sometimes it is not simple to integrate evidence, readers - even seasoned ones - often feel lost and perplexed. In addition, in order to integrate and retain our knowledge we often highlight, summarize, take notes, and write ideas of our own. It is thus not surprising that our concentration and focus break so easily. 

Alethea's Guided Reading application is the first of its kind implementation of scientifically proven reading methodologies into a digital interface. Explained in further detail below - the Guided Reading application relies on Richard E. Mayer's SOI model (Select - Organize - Integrate) and derivative reading systems (SOAR, SQ3R, SQ4R). Our workflows are designed to help build and maintain fluency in reading by:

1. Providing a systematic framework for healthy deep learning

2. Eliminating costly task-switching and subsequent attention-splitting

3. Facilitating a structured method to catalog, index, and evaluate the key instances in the text

4. Allowing for in-moment cognitive offloading into the platform 

5. Instilling lifelong learning habits and skills 

Go to the library and click on a text title. The text will open in the reader and the left side panel will present the guided reading process. 

You can move freely between the three or five steps. Note the instructions on the side-bar for each step. Click "Learn more" in each step to access full instructions and explanations.

In the first step you are instructed to survey the text, i.e. go over titles, subheadings, the abstract, and the first sentence of each paragraph. 

Whenever you come across something that interests you or might be important to you – highlight it. To highlight the text simply select the given text with your cursor and it will be automatically highlighted. 

By surveying a text before a deeper reading you will get a limited, yet oftentimes surprisingly clear understanding of the outline of the text, what it treats, what concepts or ideas are discussed, etc. 

The significance of this first step is to allow you to get a quick overview of the text, recognize the parts of the text that might be more interesting than others, and to clearly define what you're looking to get out of the reading.

This might be the most important part of the process:

Come up with questions of your own based on the general information that you see on the cards of the highlights you collected. At this state you will at once have a basic and abstract understanding of the text, but at the same time - a lot of missing details. Come up with questions to 'connect the dots'. Reading the text while actively seeking for answers will focus your reading, reduce time and effort, and help you to gain better understanding. 

The importance of coming up with questions of your own could be understood in three ways:

1. By deciding what it is that you are looking for - your relationship with the text changes dramatically; rather than being determined by an external source (that may or may not be interesting to you) - you have now been rendered the leader of your own investigative journey. By situating the importance of coming up with questions of your own as the centerpiece of the process - Alethea encourages the reader to give voice to their own curiosity and interests.

2. By clearly defining what it is that you are interested in - you can take informed decisions as to what is important and what is less important for you to focus on; an a priori 'separation the wheat from the chaff'.

3. Generating intertextual questions (i.e - questions that relate to other texts you have read and/or world events) will significantly increase the short and long term memory retention of the materials. 

It should also be noted that no scientific or research endeavour would be possible without a clearly defined 'question mark' - the skills of formulating questions is a crucial tool that will serve you throughout your studies and beyond.

In step 2 you're instructed to read the text. As you do your deeper reading, stay dedicated to finding the relevant segments to your questions; use the questions as a focusing and illuminating tool for your readings. 

By linking a highlight with your question you have thereby connected and indexed that instance under this question, and will be able to find it indexed underneath it.

While many of us have been highlighting texts for a long time, and while it may help us keep our concentration (working/sensory memory retention), researches show that (unless you have a very strong photographic memory) - highlighting does very little to help retain materials in your memory. 

Annotating in Alethea is is drastically different than traditional highlighting in the sense that beyond just saying 'this part is important - period', by linking the given part of the text with a question we are saying - 'this part is important - BECAUSE..'. This is what is called 'thematic coding' and is among the highest order cognitive skills that could be used while reading. 

Beyond the fact that by interlinking the text with your questions you create an 'external memory bank' of each one of your themes - by merely using the highlights as answers to your questions you are coding the data into your short & long term memory as you would if you were summarizing the text as you're reading it. But there's another benefit:

When moving back and forth between reading and taking notes we are effectively 'task switching', i.e. - alternating between categorically different cognitive procedures; overtime this creates an unbearable load that could decrease our cognitive performance by a factor of 10. 

By keeping the reader's eyes and focus in the same frame - Alethea offers a completely new way of reading and learning that could ultimately make the tedious task of note-taking redundant. Try it out for yourself and see if it works. 

This part is an important part of the process as it will allow you to:

• Review the work you've done up to this point 

• Critique yourself, revise, amend or edit if needed. 

• Create a new order of the cards in a sequence that makes better sense to you

This is your time to synthesize your understanding of the text, by comparing your written answers with the answer-cards you've collected in step 2 – you can now assess yourself and your performance, understand what it is that you understood, and what needs further help and clarification from your instructor or peers. 

In the first step you are instructed to survey the text, i.e. go over titles, subheadings, the abstract, and the first sentence of each paragraph. 

Whenever you come across something that interests you or might be important to you – highlight it. To highlight the text simply select the given text with your cursor and it will be automatically highlighted. 

By surveying a text before a deeper reading you will get a limited, yet oftentimes surprisingly clear understanding of the outline of the text, what it treats, what concepts or ideas are discussed, etc. 

The significance of this first step is to allow you to get a quick overview of the text, recognize the parts of the text that might be more interesting than others, and to clearly define what you're looking to get out of the reading.

This is your time to synthesize your understanding of the text, by comparing your written answers with the highlights you've collected in previous steps. You can now assess yourself and your performance, understand what it is that you understand, and what needs further help and clarification from your instructor or peers.