iSTART 2: Improvements for efficiency and effectiveness

Abstract

iSTART (interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking) is a Web-based reading strategy trainer that develops students' ability to self-explain difficult text as a means to improving reading comprehension. Its curriculum consists of modules presented interactively by pedagogical agents: an introduction to the basics of using reading strategies in the context of self-explanation, a demonstration of self-explanation, and a practice module in which the trainee generates self-explanations with feedback on the quality of reading strategies contained in the self-explanations. We discuss the objectives that guided the development of the second version of iSTART toward the goals of increased efficiency for the experimenters and effectiveness in the training. The more pedagogically challenging high school audience is accommodated by (1) a new introduction that increases interactivity, (2) a new demonstration with more and better focused scaffolding, and (3) a new practice module that provides improved feedback and includes a less intense but more extended regimen. Version 2 also benefits experimenters, who can set up and evaluate experiments with less time and effort, because pre-and posttesting has been fully computerized and the process of preparing a text for the practice module has been reduced from more than 1 person-week to about an hour's time.

Changing How Students Process and Comprehend Texts with Computer-Based Self-Explanation Training

“…For example, at one location in a text, an appropriate self-explanation may rely heavily on a causal process that is clearly delineated in the prior discourse contexts, whereas at another location, a reader may have to rely on text-relevant background knowledge. Accordingly, the goal of self-explanation training is two-fold: 1) to have students produce more self-explanations, and 2) to teach students when it is appropriate to employ self-explanation strategies and what kinds of self-explanations are most appropriate (Levinstein, Boonthum, Pillarisetti, Bell, & McNamara, 2007;.…”

“…Participants received the version of iSTART described in Levinstein et al, 2007). Briefly, iSTART teaches self-explanation and reading strategies and consists of three sections: introduction, demonstration, and practice.…”

“…1. to have students produce more self-explanations, and 2. to teach students when it is appropriate to employ self-explanation strategies and what kinds of self-explanations are most appropriate (Levinstein, Boonthum, Pillarisetti, Bell, & McNamara, 2007;.…”

Comprehension through explanation as the interaction of the brain’s coherence and cognitive control networks

“…The experimenter monitored performance during this practice and provided encouragement to utilize all five self-explanation elements if participants were not using one or more of the SERT strategies. The SERT training took about 1 h. In the two published studies, this training session was identical except that an intelligent tutoring system, iSTART, was used to train participants for 90 min (McNamara et al, 2004 ; Levinstein et al, 2007 ). iSTART is based on SERT with the primary difference being that a computer tutor provides the feedback instead of the human experimenter.…”

Raising internet security and privacy awareness in primary and early secondary education via mobile gamification

“…In this context, the authors in Hauge et al (2014) describe two modes of analytics in serious games, namely real-time, and off-line, for improving various aspects of the learning environment, such as game quality, game performance, and game progression, as well as monitoring learning goals achievement and assessment of users' behavior and appreciation. An example of this situation is that of "iSTART-2" (Levinstein et al, 2007) DGBL environment. iSTART-2 collects data about every choice the learners make during their interaction with it.…”