I was finally able to publish the last study done during my PhD! Fixing up peer review requests and adult life got in the way (I got hitched, bought a house, etc.). But I’m glad I finally got this 100% done. Lately I’ve got an itch to do research and build stuff again.
An Empirical Evaluation of Reading Comprehension Tablet Software Utilizing the Question Generation Strategy
Abstract: Motivated by the substantial socioeconomic issues associated with low literacy skills, we developed a tablet application to help adults improve their reading comprehension skills. Though reading comprehension is a complex and multifaceted skill, studies have shown that teaching students metacognitive strategies can help them improve their reading comprehension skills. We created an iPad application which attempts to teach users the question generation strategy. We built another iPad application as a control that only allowed users to practice their reading comprehension skills; this application did not attempt to teach a metacognitive skill. We tested the applications with 48 undergraduate and graduate student participants from McMaster University. The application which aimed to teach the question generation strategy resulted in a statistically significant improvement in reading comprehension performance relative to the control application. We conclude that tablet software can be used to teach the question generation strategy, and propose directions for future work
Full Paper:
http://www.kevinbrowne.ca/wp-content/papers/LIT2018.pdf