Impact of Bridging Strategy and Feeling of Knowing Judgments on Reading Comprehension Using COMPRENDE: An Educational Technology

• In Event: 28.023 - 21st Century Calibration: Judging Performance in Digital and Classroom Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
A reader must effectively and efficiently comprehend texts to successfully navigate his environment and achieve his learning goals. However, too many learners in today’s fast-paced world struggle to comprehend what they read, despite the advent of technology to assist in this regard. Thus, the main purpose of the present investigation was to explore the effects of a newly-developed educational technology, COMPRENDE, on adolescents’ (N = 85) reading comprehension.

Methods
More specifically, we explored whether exposure to COMPRENDE significantly improved students’ reading comprehension performance gains, and to what degree this was effective for struggling readers as compared to proficient readers. Further, we sought to better understand whether planning, monitoring, and evaluation (as metacognitive skills), bridging strategy, contextual vocabulary, perception of COMPRENDE, confidence judgments for performance judged to be correct, and confidence judgments for performance judged to be incorrect (as cognitive skills) significantly predicted reading comprehension performance.

Results
Confidence judgments were collected as indices of feeling of knowing (FOKs). Employing regression-based analyses with their associated effect sizes, results revealed that COMPRENDE was successful at improving reading comprehension performance but only for struggling readers, and that bridging strategy use was the best predictor of reading comprehension performance across both local (item-by-item) and global (holistic) FOKs.

Scholarly Significance
In this study, we demonstrated the utility of COMPRENDE as an educational technology tool for improving key learning skills, such as reading comprehension, as well as important metacognitive skills, such as monitoring and control. These learning benefits were especially pronounced among learners with less proficient reading skills, underscoring the value of COMPRENDE especially among these struggling readers. Through its compact, brief implementation, we also showed its potential to be administered in actual classrooms by educators. As has been the call with much of the reading/text comprehension literature, the data in the present study supported the conclusion that COMPRENDE mostly benefits the cognitive and metacognitive processes of struggling readers. The next step is to replicate and extend the benefits of COMPRENDE and expand its capabilities to continue to meet the needs of a technologically literate and well-informed citizenry.

Authors

• Christian Soto, Universidad de Concepción

• Antonio P. Gutierrez de Blume, Georgia Southern University

• Fernanda Rodriguez, Universidad de Concepción

• Rodrigo Asún, Universidad de Chile

• Mauricio Figueroa, Universidad de Concepción

• Marian Serrano, Universidad de Valencia