Two replications studies conducted during the Fall 2007 were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of highlighting as an additional support for electronic text. We conducted two replications of one research design during Fall 2007 that were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of highlighting as an additional support for electronic text. Both studies were conducted with students who have moderate intellectual disabilities. For our intervention we imported short passages between 45-50 words into Microsoft Reader. The passages, written on approximately a 4th grade reading level, targeted content related to various social and daily living skills. The research question addressed whether or not highlighting words while the computer read them affected student’s ability to increase the number of words read correctly from the pretest to the posttest. Further, the replications also assessed whether or not the highlighting affected story retell. The results showed little difference between highlighting and not highlighting on student’s ability to read words correctly and retell the passage.
Currently we are conducting a study designed to assess the effects of repeated readings on story retell when presented with electronic text support. The study is using similar passages as the ones mentioned above. Our goal with this investigation is to determine if the number of repeated readings ideally needed for maximum percentage of correct retell can be correlated to the student’s assessed auditory working memory.
Later this spring semester we will focus our efforts on studying the levels of supports (text only, text with audio, text with a photograph, and text with a video) in relation to how they affect comprehension of a specific written direction (given in conjunction with e-text supports). A variety simple directions will be presented using PowerPoint as the delivery tool that also includes one of the four levels of supports (e.g., text with audio, text with photos). The students will be asked to complete the task and their response will be scored correct or incorrect. The research team hopes to determine which level of support is most beneficial for students with intellectual disabilities on different reading levels.
We continue to make progress in the area of disseminating our research results. We are revising one article of a study-conducted fall 2007 and will resubmit that manuscript by the end of March. We are in the final stages of completing a new manuscript based on the results of a study completed during the spring 2007 that should be to reviewers by the end of February. In addition, we anticipate completing a manuscript of a study conducted by one of our doctoral research interns by the end of this semester. The data for this study was collected this past fall.
