1. Time spent by Group
Group
AL UM
Timespent(seconds)
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
EasyTime
HardTime
Struggling Adult Readers Spend More Time Choosing to Learn, but Achieve
Comprehension Strategy Learning Comparable to Normal Readers
Breya Walker, Raven Davis, Whitney Baer, and Arthur Graesser
The University of Memphis
INTRODUCTION
FUNDING
CONCLUSIONS
METHODS DISCUSSION
Procedure
• Self-select questions on a board
• Questions were categorized as Easy (i.e., 100 and 200 points) and
Hard (i.e., 300 and 400 points)
• Materials cover: Key information, evaluating narrative and persuasive
text, building bridges, bridging narrative text, and evaluating
understanding
• Goal: User answers self-selected question correctly to reach 2500
points
Research reported in this project was supported by the Institute of
Education Sciences (IES) under award number
[R305C120001]
Time Per Question
SR- Easy 2.4 minutes
Hard 2.9 minutes
CS- Easy: 1.1 minutes
Hard: 1.4 minutes
• No significant difference between question selection
and group
• No significant difference between total score obtained
by SR compared to CS
• There was a significant difference in the amount of time
it took to complete the review module with SR spending
more time interacting with AutoTutor and answering
question regardless of question type compared to CS
• Therefore, based upon previous research, these results
support the notion that struggling readers may have
acquired several reading comprehension strategies
necessary to perform at a comparable level to that of
normal readers.
Analysis
Variables:
• Completion time (Total time, Easy Time/Hard Time), Total score (sum of
1st attempts only), Question selection (Easy vs. Hard number of questions
selected by group)
RESULTS
100 point question 300 point question
**
*
College Students: n = 34
(M = 23.35 age, SD = 6.98)
Struggling Adults: n = 45
(M = 43.8 age, SD = 14.6)
The Center for the Study of Adult Literacy (CSAL) has created an Auto Tutor
Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that teaches multifaceted higher- and lower-level
reading comprehension strategies and promotes reading competency supported by
previous research (Lovett et al., 2000). The current investigation sought to examine
the performance of Struggling Readers (SR) and College Students (CS) on multiple
reading comprehension strategies implemented into a review module. We
hypothesized that SR would spend more time interacting with the module compared
to CS, SR would opt to self-select easier items given their reading ability, and SR
performance would be different compared to CS.
• Contrary to predicted outcomes, results show that
struggling readers and college students did not differ in
the type of questions selected during the review lesson.
• Struggling readers performed just as well as college
student during the first attempts of the question selection
process with no significant differences seen in Total
Score by group. First attempt scores were analyzed only
because first attempts would provide a true reflection of
performance prior to lesson completion.
Lesson Completion
Time
SR:13.2 minutes
CS:8.8 minutes