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6
Technology to Promote Adult Literacy
In this chapter, we examine the types of technologies that are avail-
able or could be developed for adult literacy instruction. Part one presents
classes of technologies that are available and could be used to support
growth in adults’ literacy skills. Part two describes why these technologies
would be expected to improve learning and literacy skill development. Part
three describes specific digital tools and instructional approaches for prac-
ticing literacy skills. The chapter concludes with a summary and discussion
of directions for research.
We argue from the findings that technologies can be designed and used
to scaffold literacy growth in ways that may not occur in available forms
of interaction between human teachers and students. Although it is likely
that using technologies will add to the cost of literacy programs, the degree
of differentiated and sustained support adults need to develop their skills is
great enough that investments in technology may be the most cost-effective
solution. Thus, it is worth developing and testing the most promising new
approaches so that their costs and benefits are better understood.
In reviewing the research, we recognize that many studies of technology
effectiveness in education show minimal and sometimes null results. This
is not surprising. Technology does not of itself produce learning. It simply
amplifies and extends instructional strategies. Too often, studies of tech-
nology effectiveness have paid inadequate attention to the content of the
instruction and assumed that amplifying any strategy would be effective.
Neither do the studies attend sufficiently to the engineering and training
required to implement the technologies effectively.
In this chapter, we describe promising technologies that, if well en-
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TECHNOLOGY TO PROMOTE ADULT LITERACY
gineered and supported, could be used to amplify effective instructional
approaches. In some cases, we provide clear supporting evidence; in other
cases, the evidence is indirect, and efficacy studies are needed. In virtually
every case, translational research will be needed to demonstrate how the
technologies can be part of coherent systems of instruction. We point to
all of these technologies because of their potential to alleviate some of the
barriers adults experience with learning due to restricted times and places
of in-person instruction. Rising education costs also make amplification of
human effort especially important in fields, such as adult education, that
lack a strong funding base.
Furthermore, adults need opportunities to access tools and develop
proficiencies that are part of what it means to be literate in the 21st century.
As described in Chapter 2, literacy always includes a mediating technology
that makes possible the inscription and transmission of words and mean-
ings, whether a stone tablet, a quill pen, a book, a typewriter, or a word
processor. What is new in the digital age—and what makes it essential to
emphasize the role of new technologies in efforts to promote adolescent and
adult literacy—is the unprecedented nature, speed, and scale of change in
technologies for literacy that have occurred as a result of the Internet and
related information technologies, commonly referred to as Web 2.0.
An assessment by the editors of the Handbook of Research on New
Literacies, a compendium devoted to an exploration of new technologies,
provides a sense of the vast shifts now occurring as a result of the Internet
(Coiro et al., 2009a, pp. 2-3):
No previous technology for literacy has been adopted by so many, in so
many different places, in such a short period, and with such profound
consequences. No previous technology for literacy permits the immediate
dissemination of even newer technologies of literacy to every person on
the Internet by connecting to a single link on a screen. Finally, no previous
technology for literacy has provided access to so much information that is
so useful, to so many people, in the history of the world. The sudden ap-
pearance of a new technology for literacy as powerful as the Internet has
required us to look at the issue of new literacy with fresh lenses.
Many researchers in literacy and related fields are actively investigating
the implications of Internet and related information and communication
technologies (ICTs) for literacy, schooling, civic engagement, and work. To
name a few such efforts, there is interest in the strategies that readers use
for comprehending text online (e.g., Coiro and Dobler, 2007); multimodal
text production and comprehension (e.g., Hull and Nelson, 2005; Jewitt
and Kress, 2003); identifying and developing new online spaces that pro-
vide opportunities for language learning and literacy development (e.g.,
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164 IMPROVING ADULT LITERACY INSTRUCTION
Hull, Stornaiuolo, and Sahni, 2010; Lam, 2000); and documenting the
startling growth and new patterns of use of digital technologies, including
cell phones and social networking sites, in mostly out-of-school contexts
(Ito et al., 2009; Pew Internet & American Life Project, see http://www.
pewinternet.org/ [Jan. 2012]).
There are several constraints on the evidence available. Currently, out-
of-school uses of digital technologies for communication, self-presentation
(on such sites as Facebook), work, and play far outstrip their use in schools
for educational purposes. Educational institutions can lag greatly in their
uptake and appropriation of new literacy tools and practices (Beach, Hull,
and O’Brien, in press; Davies and Merchant, 2009; Greenhow, Robelia, and
Hughes, 2009), thereby limiting the available research. With few excep-
tions, such as studies of the out-of-school digital literacy practices of youth
(Hull et al., 2006; Ito et al., 2009; Lam, 2000; Lankshear and Knobel,
2003), which are only time-bound snapshots, the research base on ways
to use new technologies outside classrooms to develop adults’ literacy also
is slight.
Certain factors have constrained the use and study of technologies for
adult learning. Historically, adult education has been underresourced, in
terms of both access to literacy-related technologies and instructional tools
and teachers skilled in their instructional use. Currently, some populations
still lack Internet connectivity and access to instructional uses of digital
technologies, although such gaps are quickly narrowing (Pew Internet &
American Life Project, see http://www.pewinternet.org/ [Jan. 2012]). The
technology usage studies described earlier, for example, may not general-
ize to the adult literacy learner population, or they may apply to only part
of that population. Technology access for learning also can be a complex
matter. Although access to technologies for particular subgroups of learn-
ers needs to be verified and understood better,1 we turn next to the large
landscape of technologies for learning that are potentially available to
adolescents and adults who need to enhance their literacy. Most are readily
accessible on the Internet.
1 An interesting example of the underlying complexity of availability arose in an urban
school near one committee member. In that school, a foundation provides laptops for the
students. However, only students whose parents attend weekend orientation sessions may take
the computers home. So, all students have some access, but the subset with greater access has
parents able and willing to attend a couple Saturday sessions. Many students have computers
at home, but other family members compete for them and they may not contain support for
instructional affordances.
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CLASSES OF TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING
A report of the National Research Council (2008) identified 10 classes
of technologies for learning:
1. conventional computer-based training,
2. multimedia,
3. interactive simulation,
4. hypertext and hypermedia,
5. intelligent tutoring systems,
6. inquiry-based information retrieval,
7. animated pedagogical agents,
8. virtual environments with agents,
9. serious games, and
10. computer-supported collaborative learning.
To this list must be added the everyday tools of word processing. The ability
to easily and quickly compose and edit prose is a major determiner of writ-
ing achievement, and word processing tools replace laborious writing and
complete rewriting with faster (after practice) typing and editing that does
not require recopying the entire written product (see Berninger et al., 1998;
Christensen, 2005; Graham, Harris, and Fink, 2000; Graham, Harris, and
Fink-Chorzempa, 2002).
Most of the items on the list above (3-10) were not widely available
20 years ago, and most are not mainstream technologies in schools today.
Many of these technologies are unfamiliar to and unavailable to adult
learners, particularly those with low literacy. This means that learning
systems, like systems used for marketing and other commercial purposes,
need highly intuitive interfaces and modes of learning activity. The labels,
icons, graphics, layout, and semiotic foundations of symbols need to be
easily understood and generally fully accessible without training or instruc-
tion manuals. This often is not the case for instructional technologies (Yeh,
Gregory, and Ritter, 2010). It is likely that many such uses of technology
that could be productive have proven disappointing in initial tests because
of poor design or because a potential body of users was not part of the
subculture that has absorbed knowledge of how to use a given technology.
(For example, 10 years ago, high school students generally did not need
instructions in how to use cell phones, but senior citizens sometimes did,
because the high school culture had learned about cell phones but the senior
culture had not yet absorbed this knowledge.)
One general problem in evaluating evidence on uses of technology is
that the first efforts to use an approach are often designed by small teams
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that lack the full range of skills to make software usable, even when they
have a powerful concept. Rigorous tests of the first efforts then yield
minimal results, making it harder for subsequent design teams to get the
funds needed to produce truly usable systems. Increasingly, tools to make
software more usable are becoming more usable themselves, and it may
be worth reconsidering some approaches that showed minimal results if it
appears that part of the problem was poor design.
Still, many adolescents and adults in the United States and across
the world (but possibly not all adult literacy learners) have adopted with
alacrity and ease digital technologies for everyday life that have become
inexpensive and readily available, such as cell phones. Furthermore, the lit-
erature on adolescent literacy has documented many cases of young people
who acquire facility with digital tools that require reading and writing in
their out-of-school lives and who have more digital expertise than teach-
ers, although they may experience difficulties with academic literacy. The
widespread use of digital tools associated with literacy in everyday life may
provide a means to scaffold the development of competencies in print-based
and academic literacy genres; research is needed to determine how. The
existence and widespread use of such tools also challenge educators and
educational institutions to expand definitions of literacy and opportunities
to practice literacy to include a facility with online and multimodal texts
and technologies. A related need is research on how to assess competencies
with digital texts.
HOW TECHNOLOGIES AFFECT LEARNING
Computer technologies may improve learning for many reasons. They
can be adaptive to the profiles of individual learners, give the learner con-
trol over the learning experience, better engage the learner, and be more
efficient on many dimensions. A number of researchers have reported
advantages of particular classes of technologies compared with classroom
instruction, reading textbooks, and other judiciously selected controls.
For example, Dodds and Fletcher (2004; Fletcher, 2003) conducted a
meta-analysis of studies with primarily adult learners that showed an ad-
vantage over controls for conventional computer-based training (.39 σ ef-
fect size), multimedia presentations (.50 σ), and intelligent tutoring systems
(1.08 σ). The subject matters represented in these meta-analyses included
mathematics, science, and procedural knowledge rather than reading or
writing per se. Mayer (2005) reported advantages (~1.00 σ) of multimedia
over conventional text on science/technology content; he also identified
cognitive principles that explain when multimedia presentations do or do
not help.
Successful intelligent tutoring systems have been developed to teach
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well-formed topics in mathematics, including algebra, geometry, and
programming languages (The Cognitive Tutors—Anderson et al., 1995;
Koedinger et al., 1997; Ritter et al., 2007); physics (Andes, Atlas, and Why/
Atlas—VanLehn et al., 2002, 2007); electronics (Gott and Lesgold, 2000;
Lesgold and Nahemow, 2001); and information technology (Mitrovic,
Martin, and Suraweera, 2007). These systems do not target reading and lit-
eracy per se, but the scientific, mathematical, and technical content covered
is presumably a close fit to the verbal materials that adults use in the real
world and are likely to invoke and develop aspects of verbal skill related
to reading and literacy skill. The systems show impressive learning gains
(~1.00 σ), particularly for deeper levels of comprehension in subject areas.
Not every type of advanced computer technology has been demon-
strated to facilitate learning in every subject area. Indeed, more needs to
be understood about many of these technologies. Learning gains have
either been nonsignificant or mixed in major investigations of hypertext/
hypermedia (Azevedo, 2005; Azevedo and Cromley, 2004), animation
and interactive simulation (Ainsworth, 2008; Dillon and Gabbard, 1998;
Tversky, Morrison, and Betramcourt, 2002), and inquiry-based infor-
mation retrieval (Goldman et al., 2003; Graesser and McNamara, in
press; Klahr, 2002). This may be because most learners have inadequate
strategies for inquiry learning; that is, they do not know how to use new
information tools for the purposes that have been tested. Research is
only emerging on the effectiveness of serious games (Kebritchi, Hirumi,
and Bai, 2010; O’Neil, Wainess, and Baker, 2005; Ritterfeld, Cody, and
Vorderer, 2008), virtual environments (Johnson and Beal, 2005; Johnson
and Valente, 2008), and computer-supported collaborative learning
(Bereiter and Scardamalia, 2003). Much remains to be explored about
whether these environments can play a productive role in adult literacy
improvement.
Computerized learning environments have been developed that directly
focus on reading and writing. McNamara’s edited volume (2007a) describes
many of the recent systems that have been developed, such as iSTART, to
promote deeper levels of comprehension, and Carla (Wise and VanVuuren,
2007), which focuses on more shallow levels. These computer environments
as a group help students learn reading at multiple levels, including language
decoding, vocabulary, semantic interpretation of sentences, generating in-
ferences, and building self-explanations of the content. Learning gains in
such system have been statistically significant, although effect sizes tend
to be lower than those for mathematics and other science and technology
areas. At the same time, we note that reading trainers that are commercially
available for children did not show significant improvements in the 2007
report of What Works Clearinghouse assessments (Dynarski et al., 2007).
There are questions about the quality of those evaluations, however, and
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whether the interventions adequately reflected the power of the new tech-
nologies. Regarding writing, a number of computer tools give feedback and
improve different aspects of the writing process, such as Summary Street
(Kintsch et al., 2007), e-rater (Attali and Burstein, 2006; Burstein, 2003),
and the Intelligent Essay Assessor (Landauer, Laham, and Foltz, 2000).
There are fewer writing trainers than reading trainers. Research is needed
on how computer tools can support the writing development of adults with
low literacy, including the integration into adult education programs of
Web 2.0 technologies that have become prevalent in daily life, such wikis,
blogs, and social networks.
Computer-based trainers have been developed to improve metacogni-
tion, self-regulation, and critical thinking while learners interact with mul-
timedia environments. For example, SEEK Web Tutor helps adults evaluate
the quality of information sources as they try to learn from Internet-based
materials (Graesser et al., 2007; Wiley et al., 2009), and MetaTutor trains
students on metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies (Azevedo
et al., 2009). These skills are important in the unedited Internet culture, in
which the quality of many information sources is suspect and the goals of
reading comprehension vary substantially (McCrudden and Schraw, 2007;
Rouet, 2006). The impact of these trainers on comprehension and learning
has either been modest or has not been fully evaluated, however.
An example of a tool now readily usable for instruction is onscreen
agents that act as mini-tutors to help with using a technology or to provide
other assistance. Modern learning environments increasingly incorporate ani-
mated conversation agents that speak, point, gesture, walk, and exhibit facial
expressions. Agent-based systems have shown impressive learning gains, with
moderate-to-high effect sizes (Atkinson, 2002; Gholson and Craig, 2006;
Gholson et al., 2009; Graesser, Jeon, and Dufty, 2008; Hu and Graesser,
2004; McNamara et al., 2007b; Moreno and Mayer, 2004, 2007). The
potential power of these agents is that they can mimic face-to-face com-
munication with human tutors, instructors, mentors, peers, or people who
serve other roles (Baylor and Kim, 2005). Ensembles of agents can model
social interaction. Both single agents and ensembles of agents can be carefully
choreographed to mimic and reflect on virtually any strategy connected to
reading, writing, and learning. Agent-based systems are easy for low-literate
adults to use because the human-computer interface naturally mimics every-
day social experiences.
In addition to onscreen agents, there is the opportunity for human tu-
tors to interact with students online via real-time chats, such as those that
are increasingly available to support visitors to banking, shopping, and
other websites. Although technologies have been used to provide real-time
reading and writing instruction (e.g., such instruction was organized for
children in the wake of the Haiti earthquake), the committee did not locate
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TECHNOLOGY TO PROMOTE ADULT LITERACY
research on the use of real-time chats in the educational settings. Such tech-
nologies are worth testing for adult literacy programs because they allow
flexible, immediate, and scaffolded interactions with instructors outside the
classroom setting.
DIGITAL TOOLS FOR PRACTICING SKILLS
In the sections that follow, we describe some of the possible ways
that technologies might enhance adult and adolescent literacy practice
and acquisition. Many of these technologies have yet to be tested with
adult literacy learners, so a program of empirical research to evaluate their
effectiveness and how best to implement them is highly recommended.
Nevertheless, there is empirical research that shows the promise of these
technologies in K-12 and college populations.
Group collaborative communication software. In this category, we
include the kinds of tools that are used in offices every day. Especially
helpful to adult learning, perhaps, are the tools that are starting to emerge
for exchanging comments on written materials. Other frequent forms of
collaborative communication include electronic calendars, email, text mes-
saging, Facebook, wikis, and collaboration portals. New technologies for
group communication are appearing regularly.
Word processing software. The most basic tools that can help with
literacy are standard word processing tools, which facilitate writing and
especially editing. With a little practice, students can quickly get ideas on
paper and then sharpen them. Having ideas in machine-processable form
also makes it possible to use the latest tools for exchanging ideas and work-
ing in teams on written products. Controversies remain about features of
software that make it easy to circumvent mastery of some literacy skills,
notably spelling correction. However, for most adults and adolescents who
have limited literacy, the ability to get ideas on paper, read those of oth-
ers, edit initial writing, and exchange ideas that sharpen comprehension
and composition is dramatically enhanced by word processing tools and
should therefore be encouraged (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 2003; Graham
and Perin, 2007a). In the end, the single best-established fact about literacy
is that it is a form of skilled expertise, and such skills require thousands
of hours of effective practice. Word processing tools support that practice.
Related tools, such as presentation software, are standard ways by which
empowered adults express their literacy in civic and work situations. Part
of being functionally literate today is the ability to use such tools effectively.
Bulletin boards and discussion tools. Once students are creating com-
positions and exchanging them, they need ways to hold conversations with
each other about the texts. All of this is easily possible via bulletin board
systems. On such systems, threads of conversation can be started about
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particular topics or posted texts. Students engage in multiple literacy ac-
tivities that involve reading additional documents and peer comments and
then preparing their own comments and posting them. This approach is
promising both because it provides engaging ways of practicing literacy and
because the continuing exchanges provide natural experience with the need
to write for others’ understanding.
Commenting tools embedded in programs. Contemporary online word
processing facilities provide commenting tools in online texts. Adobe Ac-
robat provides such tools for commenting on PDF files, but there also are
software packages on wiki or Moodle sites that allow students to annotate
texts individually as they read. Students can benefit from seeing which parts
of a text prompt annotations and what their peers wrote in their notes. This
turns reading into an enterprise in which quality effort is reified by artifacts
and supported with those artifact tools. The use of commenting tools also
mimics productive work, providing both motivation and practice in some of
the 21st-century skills. For example, the chapters in this report accumulated
over 100 comments each during their initial development and later editing,
even prior to the formal review stage.
Virtual meeting tools. A variety of new systems support online meet-
ings with components that permit word processing and other tools to be
shared over a network. That is, multiple people can talk to each other,
write to each other, show each other diagrams and other media, and jointly
edit a single text, PowerPoint file, or other document. Back channel tools,
such as chat windows, allow the meeting host to structure the interactions
and ensure that anyone who wishes to make a point or enact a change in
a document is given a chance to do so. While current systems are probably
too expensive for general school use (largely because of communications
charges), the price of in-house tools that could be used on a school building
network can be expected to drop rapidly, following the cost curve of most
new technologies.
Virtual meeting tools are used in the work world partly to support
working from home. In the education world, especially for adult learners,
such tools can help in overcoming transportation issues, increasing total
engaged time beyond short class periods, and, for adolescents, better con-
necting home and after-school environments to school settings. Preliminary
design and feasibility research are needed to provide a clear picture of what
is possible and whether actual learning gains would be as large as one might
predict.
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech tools. Computer-generated speech
(called text-to-speech) and speech recognition facilities (called speech-to-
text) occur throughout society (Jurafsky and Martin, 2008). Phone calls
are answered by computers that then respond to spoken commands by
consumers. High-end automobiles can respond to hundreds of voice com-
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mands, generally without training to handle a specific person’s voice. It is
entirely possible to develop texts that read themselves to a student and also
systems that listen to students reading texts aloud and give corrective as-
sistance if they make errors in their reading (Cole et al., 2003; Johnson and
Valente, 2008; Mostow, 2008). A number of intelligent tutoring systems
allow spoken student input as an alternative to typed input (D’Mello et al.,
2010; Litman et al., 2006).
Speech-to-text technologies are achieving an acceptable level of accu-
racy because the speech processing task in shadowing oral reading is highly
constrained. One knows what the reader should be saying, and hence it is
straightforward to monitor actual student speech and correct it when ap-
propriate. Other assistive possibilities exist as well. The computer jumps in
and pronounces a word on which a student stumbles. The computer orally
restates a sentence or two after a student gets stuck, thereby helping out
when processing capacity is limited.
Technologies with text-to-speech and speech-to-text facilities are grow-
ing at a fast pace. Additional capabilities are described below in the section
on Electronic Entertainment Technologies and Related Tools.
Embedding low-level coaching in electronic texts. Related to natu-
ral language processing technologies is the possibility of embedding pop-
up questions in texts that are presented on screen. This is one way to
prompt students who may get caught up in word recognition to also en-
gage in meaning. Variations of this approach were developed at the Centre
for Educational Technology in Israel two decades ago (observed by Alan
Lesgold; no documentation known but screen images are available), and
other variants were developed in the United States, such as Point and Query
(Langston and Graesser, 1993). The basic idea is that the kinds of prompts
introduced in such tools as Questioning the Author (Beck et al., 1996) can
be embedded in machine-readable text and then made to appear automati-
cally alongside the text to which they apply as the student encounters it.
It is possible to have pop-up questions tailored to match a system’s best
understanding of how the reader is processing the text in question. For ex-
ample, if the student is not spending enough time on difficult content that
is important, then there can be pop-up generic questions (Are you sure you
understand this section?) or specific questions that target particular ideas.
Automatic essay scoring. It is commonly held that a primary reason
that students are given relatively few writing assignments is that it takes
instructors too long to read and comment on them. There are two easy
solutions to this problem. One is supported by the tools for collabora-
tive text processing discussed above. Specifically, students can comment
on each other’s work. Although there are no data on how well this works
with the adolescent and adult limited literacy population, there have been
demonstrations (Cho and Schunn, 2007; Cho, Schunn, and Wilson, 2006)
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that it is an effective teaching strategy to have students comment on each
other’s written work in college courses. Positive results to date generally
have involved use of writing to teach specific content rather than in literacy
instruction.
In addition, it is possible to do considerable automated scoring of
texts through recent advances in computational linguistics. Shermis and
colleagues (2010) reviewed the performance of the three most successful
automated essay grading: the e-rater system developed at Educational Test-
ing Service (Attali and Burstein, 2006; Burstein, 2003), the Intelligent Essay
Assessor developed at Pearson Knowledge Technologies (Landauer, Laham,
and Foltz, 2000, 2003; Streeter et al., 2002), and the IntelliMetric Essay
Scoring System developed by Vantage Learning (Elliott, 2003; Rudner,
Garcia, and Welch, 2006). These systems have had exact agreements with
humans as high as the mid-80s, adjacent agreements (i.e., scores the same
or only one point apart in the rating scale) in the high mid-90s, and cor-
relations as high as the mid-80s. Just as impressive, these human-machine
agreement levels are slightly higher than agreement between pairs of trained
human raters. Automated essay graders have been used in electronic port-
folio systems to help students improve writing by giving them feedback
on many features of their essays, as in the case of Criterion (Attali and
Burstein, 2006) and MY Access (Elliott, 2003). Criterion scores essays on
six areas related to word- and sentence-level analysis that are aligned with
human scoring criteria: errors in grammar, errors in word usage, errors in
mechanics, style, inclusion of organizational segments (e.g., a thesis state-
ment, some evidence), and vocabulary content.
Intelligent tutoring systems. From 1985 to the present, there have been
a number of intelligent tutoring systems developed (see citations above)
that track student performance on various tasks, provide feedback, and
intelligently guide students in ways that promote learning. The feedback is
based on a model of how particular students must have reasoned to act as
they did, or alternatively on some mixture of such “model tracing” (what
set of mental rules could have produced the student performance details; see
Anderson et al., 1995) and reasoning from Bayesian belief networks (Pearl
and Russell, 2002). These are networks of the conditional probabilities of
having one element of competence given evidence of having or not hav-
ing others (Conati, Gertner, and VanLehn, 2002; Doignon and Falmagne,
1999).
Instant feedback tailored to the situation. Intelligent tutoring systems
operate by trying to discover what pattern of present and missing knowl-
edge best accounts for a student’s performance. When considering reading
skill training, such systems would model the comprehension skills that a
learner exhibits and then provide feedback on text processing that is tai-
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lored to the learner’s current level of knowledge and skill (Connor et al.,
2007). A system might analyze the patterns of reading time allocated to
screens of text (Conati and VanLehn, 2000) and diagnose from the pro-
cessing time patterns that particular kinds of information are not being
integrated. Such a system then might have an animated agent suggest to the
learner that connections among related ideas be noticed and elaborated. In
addition to using the temporal pattern of reading, such systems also could
use learner answers to prompt questions to decide which aspects of literacy
need further support (see McNamara, 2007b, for a review of such systems).
Detection and tailoring to emotion and engagement level. While the
field generally is just beginning to develop, there certainly are examples
already of intelligent systems that are sensitive to emotion and, thereby, to
motivational state (Baker et al., 2010; D’Mello et al., 2008; Litman and
Forbes-Riley, 2006). Such systems can be more flexible in engaging students
if they understand when a text is not engaging the student or when a task is
producing an emotional response that leads to avoidance rather than deep
engagement. Engagement is a central issue in adolescent and adult literacy
development, so having tools that can directly gauge emotional state and
infer level of engagement should afford opportunities for substantially im-
proved literacy practice tools.
Serious games. Serious games are designed with the explicit goal of
helping students learn about important subject-matter content, strategies,
and cognitive or social skills. Instead of learning by reading a textbook,
listening to a lecture, or interacting with a conventional computer system,
the learner plays a game that requires engaging curriculum content and
provides learning opportunities as part of the game context. Serious games
have revolutionary potential because the learning of difficult content be-
comes an enjoyable, engaging experience for the learner. Intellectual hard
work is transformed into play.
Very few serious games have been around for very long, so some re-
searchers and game developers speculate that game design may be inher-
ently incompatible with pedagogy (Prensky, 2000). The more optimistic
view is that there needs to be careful analysis of how the features of games
are systematically aligned with the features of pedagogy and curriculum
(Gee, 2004b; Gredler, 1996; O’Neil, Wainess, and Baker, 2005; Rieber,
1996; Shaffer, 2007; Van Eck, 2007). Van Eck (2007) has explored how
Gagne’s principles of instructional design (Gagne et al., 2005) are mapped
onto particular features of games. O’Neil, Wainess, and Baker (2005) have
presented a similar mapping of game features to Kirkpatrick’s (1994) four
levels of evaluating training (student reaction, learning, behavioral transfer,
and systemic results) and to Baker and Mayer’s (1999) model of learning
that has five major families of cognitive demands (content understanding,
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problem solving, self-regulation, communication, and collaborative team-
work). Ideally, serious games should increase enjoyment, topic interest, and
what Csikszentmihaly (1990) calls the flow experience (such intense con-
centration that time and fatigue disappear). Engagement in the game should
facilitate learning by increasing time on task, motivation, and self-regulated
activities, as long as the focus is on the instructional curriculum rather than
nongermane game components that distract from the knowledge and skills
to be learned.
The design, development, and testing of serious games are not grounded
in a rich empirical literature, but that is changing. Available reviews and
meta-analyses show mixed support as to whether serious games enhance
learning of content, strategies, or skills (Fletcher and Tobias, 2007; O’Neil,
Wainess, and Baker, 2005; Randel et al., 1992). There are documented suc-
cess cases that show the promise of serious games, such as Gopher, Weil,
and Bareket’s (1994) transfer of the Space Fortress game to piloting real
aircraft, Green and Bavelier’s (2003) transfer of action digital games to
visual selective attention, Moreno and Mayer’s (2004) use of experimenter-
constructed games to train explanations of scientific mechanisms, and a
demonstration that mathematics games can promote mathematics achieve-
ment and possibly motivation to study mathematics (Kebritchi, Hirumi,
and Bai, 2010). Researchers have identified a long list of features that are
good candidates for explaining why games enhance motivation (Loftus and
Loftus, 1983; Malone and Lepper, 1987; Ritterfeld, Cody, and Vorderer,
2008): interest, fantasy, challenge, play, feedback, narrative, hypothetical
worlds, entertainment, and so on. These hooks optimize time on task and
so could be useful to learning of reading components. The integration of
game components and literacy instruction seems destined to have a large
future (Gee, 2007; McNamara, Jackson, and Graesser, 2010).
One important characteristic of rich gaming environments is that they
allow for embedding assessment into the learning context. Shute has re-
ferred to this as “stealth assessment” because no performance is marked
specifically as testing; rather, all action is simply part of the flow of a game
(Shute et al., 2009). The basic approach, derived from Mislevy’s concept
of evidence-centered design (Mislevy, Steinberg, and Almond, 2003), is to
build both assessment and instructional choices based on that assessment
into the infrastructure behind a learning game. Although research on se-
rious gaming is mostly at a demonstration stage (see National Research
Council [2011] Learning Science Through Computer Games and Simula-
tions), the approach is strongly anchored in well-proven theory and thus
promising for further research, development, and efficacy testing.
Immersion environments. An interesting example of the sophisticated
level of intelligent training environments is the system called Tactical Iraqi
(Johnson and Beal, 2005; Johnson and Valente, 2008; Losh, 2005), which
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has been expanded to a more general Tactical Language and Culture System
for multiple languages. This system has intelligent tutoring system compo-
nents embedded in virtual reality with multiple fully embodied animated
agents. This system was developed to help junior officers prepare for duty
in Iraq, where they would need to interact with local tribal leaders in a
new language and culture. The learners in this system are confronted with
realistic situations, such as having to negotiate movement of a medical
clinic to ensure that it is not damaged during needed military maneuvers.
They then interact with graphically rendered actors, such as village elders,
young firebrands who believe all Americans are bad, and others, attempt-
ing to achieve the desired goal of moving the clinic. The system is highly
engaging, presumably in part because the responses to learners’ actions are
both cognitive and emotional.
It is not yet clear that this level of realism is needed to engage adult
and adolescent literacy learners or which learners would benefit most, but
the mere fact that it is possible sets the stage for a range of research that
examines what level of intelligent technology is cost-effective for enhancing
effective literacy practice. Moreover, as the techniques used in Tactical Iraqi
penetrate the electronic games industry and the marketing world, costs may
drop enough to make the approach feasible for low-budget adult literacy
programming.
Electronic entertainment technologies and related tools. While systems
like Tactical Iraqi are expensive in the economic context of adult educa-
tion, it may be possible to get similar levels of effect from various kinds of
entertainment tools, like role playing environments and social media. These
range from simple games to rather elaborate possibilities, such as Second
Life. The committee encourages both funding agencies and public-private
partnerships to explore possible uses. Even if the approaches add little
content to what can be done other ways, the motivational value of immer-
sion environments is substantial, and motivation and engagement remain a
critical barrier to progress in literacy for adult learners.
A variety of simple tools have been used (mainly in elementary educa-
tion, some for secondary education, and very little for adult literacy) to help
people practice and become more facile in basic components of literacy. The
tools promote, for example, practice of basic word reading and increases
in vocabulary (see Breznitz, 2006; Lyytinen et al., 2007; Scientific Learning
Corporation, 2010; see also the section above on Embedding Low-Level
Coaching in Electronic Texts).
Environments, such as Second Life, have quickly engaged significant
portions of the adult and adolescent worlds. Their motivational value can
be seen in the willingness of participants to pay real money to gain virtual
resources, such as clothing, housing, etc., that exist only in the imaginary
world on the screen. This level of motivational power might be extremely
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helpful in stimulating greater levels of literacy activity. Even in the simplest
form, one could imagine students writing and revising essays in order
to earn virtual clothes for an avatar or access for their avatar to a new
environment.
Finally, there is a range of new social media (Second Life is partly a
social medium, too), including Facebook, MySpace, and others, that gener-
ate large amounts of multimedia communication and might be useful in two
ways. One is that, because they are stimuli for large amounts of verbal com-
munication, they may provide a portion of the practice that adults need to
build adequate literacy skills. It also is possible, of course, that they instead
reinforce activity that never requires deeper comprehension or composition
practice. This raises a second possibility, which is that social media might
be shaped to require or provide incentives for more productive literacy
practice. To some extent, this already may be occurring. For example,
increasing numbers of adults are meeting and becoming paired through
social media, which places a premium on being able to describe oneself in
text and to respond to written questions. More directly, researchers have
begun to design and implement social networking sites specifically to sup-
port and encourage literacy-rich educational activities for youth, such as
multimodal composing, language learning, and intercultural understanding
(e.g., Hull, Stornaiuolo, and Sahni, 2010). The committee thinks that this
second possibility merits consideration and suggests that such approaches
be included among those encouraged in funding for prototype development
and validation.
Finally, the Internet, Web 2.0 technologies, and learning systems sup-
ported by technology can potentially eliminate or ameliorate constraints
of space and time that have traditionally governed adults’ opportunities
to learn. Given web-based or agent-based tutors and the range of social
and cognitive supports that can be provided online, the necessity for adults
to be physically present in classrooms at designated times may be greatly
lessened. We are not advocating that online tutoring, technologically me-
diated instruction, or distance education replace face-to-face instruction.
However, we think it is important to explore what combinations of physi-
cally copresent, Internet-enabled, and computer-supported activity may be
effective for adult learners. Because many of these adults must balance the
need to extend their literacy learning with the considerable demands and
responsibilities of work and family, highly motivating environments may
be especially important in stimulating literacy practice.
It is worthwhile to consider promising technologies for adult literacy
education even if current development costs are high. Initial versions of
instructional software can be very expensive because of the steep learning
curve, but the cost becomes much lower with subsequent versions. For
example, the first version of one industrial training technology that went
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through five generations of development cost almost $2 million, but the
cost for the fifth version was only $70,000 (Lesgold, in press). Moreover,
first-generation development costs for many of the instructional approaches
likely to benefit adult literacy learners may be borne by early adopters, such
as the military.
SUMMARY AND DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH
Technologies with potential to support higher levels of adult and ad-
olescent literacy development are appearing, changing, improving, and
becoming more affordable at a very rapid pace. Technologies are vital to
making the entire population literate because of their value for improving,
leveraging, and making more affordable activities that require intense hu-
man effort, such as literacy instruction. Internet technologies also have the
potential to alleviate barriers associated with limited times and places of
instruction. Digital technologies are important to incorporate into literacy
instruction as the tools required for literacy in a digital age.
Ten classes of technologies for learning are potentially available to sup-
port the literacy development of those outside K-12 schools: convention-
ally computer-based training, multimedia, interactive simulation, hypertext
and hypermedia, intelligent tutoring systems, inquiry-based information
retrieval, animated pedagogical agents, virtual environments with agents,
serious games, and computer-supported collaborative learning. These com-
puter technologies would be expected to improve learning because they
enable instruction to be adapted to the needs of individual learners, give
the learner control over the learning experience, better engage the learner,
and have the potential to develop skills efficiently along several dimensions.
Numerous digital tools are potentially available to support adults in
practicing their literacy skills and for giving the feedback that supports
learning, among them group collaborative communication software, word
processing, speech-to-text and text-to-speech tools, embedded low-level
coaching of electronic texts, immersion environments, intelligent tutoring
systems, serious games, and automatic essay scoring. Studies are needed
to establish that the efficacy of effective instructional approaches can be
enhanced by technology and to clarify which subpopulations of learners
benefit from the technology. Some of this research is emerging with tech-
nologies for instruction, with intelligent tutoring systems among those with
the strongest positive effects.
The ways in which adults will benefit from instructional technologies
will depend on the subpopulation of adults. Given the technologies that are
ready to be developed, studies are needed to develop and assess the effects
of technologies for English language learners, adolescents and adults with
less than high school levels of literacy, learners with disabilities, and college
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students who need to enhance their reading and writing skills. In doing
the research, it will be important to understand the technology skill sets of
both those who need to develop their literacy and the instructors involved
in technology-facilitated instruction and to provide the needed supports.
Technology changes quickly in price, availability, and social penetra-
tion, making it extremely difficult to know which people are using which
technologies at a particular point in time. For example, some may com-
municate largely through text messaging, and others use social networking
sites or business mail systems. To help develop the capacity to use technolo-
gies for learning, it will be important to identify both the texts and tools
already routinely used by various subgroups of the adult learner population
and the types of texts they need to be able to produce and comprehend.
A challenge in the use of technology for adult literacy instruction
may be overcoming complex institutional arrangements often involved in
changing educational practice. This complexity leads to high institutional
inertia in the adoption of technologies that much more rapidly penetrate
the general world of consumers. A further challenge is the learning curve
for any new technology, during which initial costs are high and utility is not
fully developed. Understanding whether a particular technology is worth
the investment will require a sophisticated research funding strategy. Such a
strategy would involve deciding on the best bets for investment, sustaining
the investment long enough for the technologies and their implementation
to be refined sufficiently to have substantial impact, and maintaining agility
in technology investment and implementation to respond to rapid evolu-
tions in technology.
Research is needed to test new and evolving technologies and resolve
inconclusive findings. Many specific uses of technology for adolescent and
adult literacy instruction have been shown to be effective in small-scale,
controlled studies. For these uses, the next step will be to evaluate them in
studies with larger populations and diverse settings. At least as important,
though, is programmatic translational research that can show the ways in
which an existing instructional system or organization can benefit from the
technologies that show the greatest promise.
