Problem Solving With Digital Texts: Online Reading With Elementary School Students

• In Event: How Can Computer Games Change Text Comprehension and Learning?

Abstract

Purpose: New technologies are constantly changing the landscapes of reading and writing (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008). In addition, transactions and social interactions that facilitate readers’ comprehension of print have begun to take on new meaning in complex, online environments. To learn how individuals are meeting the demands of a 21st century knowledge society, research in a variety of disciplines has shifted attention away from information recall and transmission and toward the construction of personal understanding and co-construction of new knowledge (Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills, 2008). This study explores the cognitive and social processes elementary aged children use to navigate through and negotiate meaning within online texts while working together to solve an information problem using the Internet.

Methods: Participants were presented with two information problems, on two different days. In one scenario, students were invited to find four eco-friendly toys to help Toys-R-Us open a new Green Toys Shop in their community. On another day, they were invited to join a task force to do research and decide if it was worthwhile to clean up the pollution in The Black Warrior River, a popular river in their state. Participants read in partners and a screen capture program simultaneously recorded on-screen actions, verbal think-alouds, and peer dialogue. Content analysis (Krippendorf, 2004) was applied to analyze discourse content with particular emphasis on the use of constructively responsive online reading comprehension strategies (see Coiro, Castek, & Guzniczak, 2011) and collaborative patterns of interaction in the co-construction of knowledge (see Gronott, 1993).

Findings: Preliminary analyses revealed developmental differences in children’s ability to navigate and negotiate online texts related to age, reading ability, and experience with the Internet. In addition, different dyads revealed unique sets of online reading comprehension strategies used during each task. Finally, at least four styles of interaction were observed associated with varying degrees of collaboration and relative knowledge/expertise. Presenters will share examples of these findings and highlight instances of more and less educationally valuable interactions documented as students engaged in Internet inquiry.

Significance: Findings from this study can offer important insights into text features and collaborative online reading practices that can mediate or complicate meaning making and problem solving during online inquiry. These insights can offer a way forward for researchers and educators wanting to know more about how to support elementary students who seek to learn from online informational texts.




Figure 1. Reading Gains (Posttest–Pretest Scores) observed across conditions. Error bars represent standard error of the difference. * = Pairwise comparison between pre- and posttest significant at the p < .05 level. All posthoc analyses were subjected to Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons.

Author

• Julie Coiro, University of Rhode Island