Poster #58 - The Impact of Computer-Assisted Technology on Literacy Acquisition During COVID-19-Related School Closures

• In Event: Poster Session 16

Abstract

Introduction:
The COVID-19 pandemic led to nationwide school closures and loss of in-person instruction during the 2019-2020 academic year across the U.S., which had a profound impact on the reading development of beginning readers (grades K-2) (Bao et al., 2020; Donnelly and Patrinos, 2021; Tomasik et al., 2021). In this study we sought to examine if the EdTech program GraohoLearn (Richardson and Lyytinen, 2014), would help mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 academic slide. This loss of early literacy learning, due to a lack of in-person instruction for a prolonged period of time, has potentially negative effects on children’s future literacy, which is important for functioning in modern-day society (Castles et al., 2018). We also sought to understand which children would benefit most from EdTech to further understand if and how it should be implemented.
Methods:
Participants were 172 English speaking children in kindergarten, first or second grade. Due to school closures, children were asked to play GraphoLearn at home for 20 minutes a day, five days a week. Demographics and descriptive statistics can be found on Table 1. Pre- and post- standardized early literacy (STAR) scores where used as the dependent variable and compared to children’s expected growth (Renaissance Learning, 2022). A multiple regression analysis was then conducted using data on GraphoLearn engagement. We also used the initial GraphoLearn performance as another predictor to assess children’s letter sound knowledge, rime awareness, and word recognition.
Results:
For our first question, we found no significant difference between the average reading growth and the expected reading growth. This suggests that the children in our sample seem to be gaining reading skills as expected in a regular school year. Regarding our second question, some of our preliminary finding suggest that children with higher initial word recognition skills benefited more from playing GraphoLearn overall than children with lower word recognition abilities. We also found that older children who played more units in a fixed number of days made significantly more early literacy progress. The multiple linear regression model explained 48% of the variance in early literacy growth (see Figure 1).
Conclusions:
While this study found relevant support on EdTech’s ability to mitigate some of the negative effects of school closures on children’s reading ability, we were unable to have a control group. The lack of a control group makes it difficult to gage the true effects GraphoLearn had on literacy. Despite having limitations, our findings provide preliminary evidence that EdTech interventions administered at home might have positive effects in child’s learning.

Authors

• Caroline G Richter, University of Alabama, Birmingham
  Presenting Author

• Alison Dahlman, University of Alabama, Birmingham

• Luca Campanelli

• Noam Siegelman

• Kelly Mahaffy

• Mark Van Den Bunt

• Devin Kearns

• Nicole Landi, University of Connecticut

• John Sabatini

• Kenneth Pugh

• Fumiko Hoeft