For centuries, reading has been a cornerstone of imparting foundational concepts, theories, and data to students prior to engaging with them to help them comprehend and apply their learning. But, a growing crisis of disengagement with learning materials has been occurring, as attention spans shorten and students are afforded many shortcuts to learning. Today, many students arrive in class without reading.

In a survey of 395 students at two universities:

• only 24.8% reported completing assigned readings before class,
• 40.8% waited until studying for exams, and
• 18.7% did not complete them.

Moreover, 89.1% believed they could earn a C or better without doing any reading (Baier et al., 2011). These findings expose a fundamental instructional problem: when students skip their first encounter with course content, how will they develop the basic concepts needed for meaningful discussion and application?

CourseCurrent proposes STREAM as a response: interactive reading assignments that present key concepts in short, narrated sections with embedded knowledge checks. Students submit completion certificates with unique identifiers through the learning management system, simplifying documentation for faculty.

The model emphasizes active processing and application, and an academic crowdsourcing model contributes content updates throughout the year to keep STREAM course materials current. STREAM gives faculty a way to integrate engagement with foundational concepts as an explicit part of a course's design and grading.

Research supports this approach to assignment design. In physics and biology courses, targeted readings paired with online quizzes resulted in 80% of students reporting regular pre-class reading (Heiner et al., 2014). Beyond enabling richer participationin class discussions, a meta-analysis of 222 studies involving 48,478 students found a moderate benefit of classroom quizzing for academic achievement (g = 0.499; Yang et al., 2021). These findings support reading accountability and retrieval practice.

STREAM by CourseCurrent transforms OER-aligned content into interactive reading assignments that keep pace with advances in science and technology, provide current real-world examples and application scenarios, and changes in laws and regulations. Short, narrated sections and built-in knowledge checks help students engage with foundational concepts and connect them to current issues.

STREAM updates automatically for faculty and students, keeping content and knowledge checks aligned with state of the art informationg without requiring instructors to rebuild quizzes or search for supplemental materials each time they teach - allowing faculty to focus on teaching while students enage with current, interactive content.

Baier, K.,Hendricks, C., Warren Gorden, K., Hendricks, J. E., & Cochran, L. (2011).College students’ textbook reading, or not! AmericanReading Forum Annual Yearbook, 31.https://www.americanreadingforum.org/_files/ugd/c10ff9_a728b4fc180c413b9cdfd8cb2033342c.pdf

Heiner, C. E.,Banet, A. I., & Wieman, C. (2014). Preparing students for class: How to get80% of students reading the textbook before class. American Journal of Physics, 82(10), 989–996.https://doi.org/10.1119/1.4895008

Passamaneck, L.(n.d.). STREAM: A model to keep coursescurrent [PowerPoint slides].

Yang, C., Luo,L., Vadillo, M. A., Yu, R., & Shanks, D. R. (2021). Testing (quizzing)boosts classroom learning: A systematic and meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 147(4), 399–435.https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000309