The TICA Research Project (IES Grant)
Teaching Internet Comprehension to Adolescents -
Developing Internet Comprehension Strategies
among Poor, Adolescent Students at Risk to Become Dropouts
The University of Connecticut's Neag School
of Education has received a $1.8 million 3-year research grant from the
U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to
study the new literacies of reading comprehension on the Internet. The project
began on July 1, 2005. The New Literacies Research
Team, headed by Dr. Donald
J. Leu, is collaborating with Dr. David Reinking and
a team of graduate students from Clemson University in this research program.
Efforts will focus on seventh grade rural South Carolina and urban Connecticut
school districts with typically low-achieving readers who are most at risk
of dropping out of school. Through an integrated sequence of studies, team
members will develop a research-based adaptation of reciprocal teaching
to support these students in acquiring the challenging, higher-level comprehension
skills the Internet demands. The research will focus on increasing students’
ability to identify important problems and then locate, critically evaluate,
synthesize, and communicate information as they go about solving those problems
online. This project will provide the research base to help prepare students
for the reading and information demands of the 21st century.
Above, the Clemson and University of Connecticut grant teams
pose with the board where the two teams worked together to map out plans
for the three-year project
Primary Goals for Year 1
The primary goal of Year 1 of this study is
to develop a theoretical, data-driven framework for producing high levels
of comprehension, engagement, and school learning among students in the
target population. A secondary goal is to identify variables and to
develop and pilot materials, procedures, and assessments that will guide
our work in Years 2 and 3.
Activities in Year 1 seek to investigate the following research
questions:
- Among students in our target population, what
is the nature and frequency of reading on the Internet inside and outside
school?
- Among students in our target population, what
comprehension strategies, orientations, and patterns of use are evident
as they engage in locating, evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating information
on the Internet?
- What type of instrument can reliably and validly
measure online reading comprehension?
During Year 1, we will collect and
analyze two sources of information to inform subsequent work: (a) a survey
of students in our target population aimed at characterizing Internet use
at home and at school and (b) verbal protocol data obtained from high volume
Internet readers in our target population as they read informational texts
obtained from the Internet. In addition, we will refine preliminary measures
of online reading comprehension and begin to field test Internet Reciprocal
Teaching (IRT), an adapted model of reciprocal teaching, as we prepare
for the design studies scheduled for Year 2. You can view videos
gathered from earlier explorations with Internet Reciprocal Teaching from
Jill Castek's 2005 conference
presentation at the International Reading Association.
Primary Goals for Years 2 and 3
Using data and assessment procedures from Year
1, in Year 2 we will field test the viability of various approaches to
implementing IRT towards increasing reading comprehension among adolescents
at risk of becoming dropouts. Specifically, we will conduct a design
experiment to generate formative data aimed at refining intervention
procedures and identifying key variables to control or manipulate in the
conventional, experimental field-trials during Year 3. We will also continue
to revine several integrated measures of online reading comprehension.
In Year 3, our major goal is to conduct an experiment with random
assignment of treatment conditions at the classroom level using hierarchical
linear modeling (HLM) procedures. The proposed experimental design will
test the effects of an adapted reciprocal teaching approach designed to increase
reading comprehension and knowledge of effective Internet reading comprehension
strategies. The experiment will span most of one academic year.
Acknowledgement and Disclaimer
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305G050154 to The University of Connecticut. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.
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