R. Scott Clark makes the following observation about the comparative effectiveness of read media:

Nevertheless, I am increasingly convinced that, for thoughtful, reflective engagement with a text, hard copy works best. I find that students (and email correspondents) do not really read online texts very closely. It might be a confusion of media. It’s one thing to breeze through ephemeral email. It’s another thing to breeze through assigned readings. In the Doctrine of God course, from the time students began to read some of the assigned readings on screen, their comprehension dropped measurably. Where students who did the same reading in hard copy seemed to grasp the material, few students seem to grasp the very same material by reading it on screen. Test scores for that portion of the course dropped markedly, even after students were notified of this problem and trend.

via The Outlook, Old School Printed Stuff, and Faithfulness « Heidelblog