Development of an Interactive Narrative for Adult Literacy Learners

Introduction

Approximately one in six, or 36 million adults, in the United States struggle with basic literacy skills (NCES, 2016). However, little research focuses on the educational needs of adult literacy learners and few educational technologies exist to meet those needs. The project described in this chapter seeks to contribute to the understanding of the educational needs of adult literacy learners and investigate the efficacy of an intelligent tutoring system in supporting the development of reading skills with these end-users. More precisely, this chapter reports on a work-in-progress that builds upon the Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking-2 (iSTART-2), an intelligent tutoring system that provides self-explanation strategy instruction to improve reading comprehension. Throughout the development of the modified iSTART-2 system, the unique needs of the adult literacy learner population were carefully deliberated. The chapter reflects on this process and outlines the specific guidelines followed to adapt the system to these learners.

iSTART-2 provides self-explanation strategy training as well as varied practice generating self-explanations with automated feedback driven by natural language processing (NLP). Developed for high school students, the original iSTART improved self-explanation skills and performance on reading comprehension measures (McNamara, O’Reilly, Best, & Ozuru, 2006). The comprehension strategies that students learn within the newer iSTART-2 (e.g., comprehension monitoring, paraphrasing, bridging inferencing, elaborating) are appropriate and effective for a wide range of readers, and thus, are expected to be effective for adult learners. To further optimize iSTART-2 for adults with low literacy skills, several modifications and supplements have been developed. These changes include additional strategy modules on summarization and question asking, as well as a new interactive narrative (or “choose your own adventure” story) called Lost in Springdale, which affords additional opportunities for reading comprehension practice with varied authentic content.

In developing the narrative, several design guidelines and recommendations were followed to address the unique needs of adults who read below functional literacy levels, which is defined as below an eighth-grade level. Pronunciation scaffolding and auditory presentations are incorporated because this population exhibits phonological awareness, decoding, and fluency deficits (Greenberg, Ehri, & Perin, 1997; 2002; Kruidenier, 2002; Nanda, Greenberg, & Morris, 2010). Because learners are motivated by instruction that holds personal significance, media that are life-relevant to adult readers are included (e.g., news stories, instructional manuals, emails; personal health; Lesgold & Welch-Ross, 2012; Guthrie et al., 1996). Additionally, by making the storyline adaptive to learner decisions, the consequences of poor reading comprehension are simulated in a realistic context, yet without any actual threats to their livelihood.