The effects of a virtual tutee system on academic reading engagement in a college classroom

Abstract

Poor student engagement with academic readings has been frequently reported in college classrooms. As an effort to improve college students' reading engagement, researchers have developed a virtual environment in which students take on the role of tutor and teach a virtual tutee, the virtual tutee system (VTS). This research examined the effectiveness of the VTS for enhancing students' academic reading motivation, engagement, and performance. Two groups of college students were compared: students who used the VTS and those who used an online reading guide (RG). Both quantitative and qualitative data were used to acquire a better understanding of reading motivation and engagement. The study found that students in the VTS group engaged in a deep level of cognitive processing when they completed the reading assignments. They also exhibited a higher reading performance than students in the RG group. These findings imply that teaching and interacting with a virtual tutee promotes students' deep engagement in reading activities. The paper discusses study limitations and suggestions for future research.

The Impact of Virtual Writing Tutor on Writing Skills and Attitudes of Omani College Students

“…al, 2018;Chun, 2016;Rosen, 2016;James, 2016;Abdallah & Mansour, 2015;Eder Intriago et al, 2016) found that various technological tools and trends had a positive impact on students' EFL learning generally and academic writing specifically. Added to that, the findings are also consistent with previous studies investigating virtual tutoring to improve education in general and EFL learning in particular (Tan, 2019;Abdelmageed & El-Naggar, 2018;Thao, 2017;Ali, 2016;Park & Kim, 2016).…”

“…They indicated that they enjoyed the project, found various foci and aspects useful for their pronunciation development, and particularly appreciated the access to immediate feedback on their oral English performance. In reading skills, for instance, as an effort to improve college students' reading engagement, Park and Kim (2016) developed Virtual Tutee System (VTS) in which students take on the role of tutor and teach a virtual tutee. The results showed that the VTS group was involved in a deep level of cognitive processing when they completed the reading assignments.…”

Development of software to support argumentative reading and writing by means of creating a graphic organizer from an electronic text

“…Because electronic documents have become increasingly popular, research is being conducted on reading strategies for online documents or digital texts depending on students' learning strategies and the strategies' suitability under particular circumstances (Hsieh and Dwyer 2009;Hermena et al 2017;Ben-Yehudah and Eshet-Alkalai 2018). Various computer software programs are being developed to guide beginner students' reading strategies by providing functions such as prompts (Britt and Aglinskas 2002;Stadtler and Bromme 2008;Park and Kim 2016), graphic organizational frameworks (Chang et al 2001;Liu et al 2010;Pirnay-Dummer and Ifenthaler 2011;Ponce et al 2012;Dwyer et al 2013;Ponce, et al 2013;Kiili et al 2016), and underlining and annotation functions (Glover et al 2007;Wolfe 2000;Chen et al 2012;van Horne et al 2016;Winne et al 2017;Yanikoglu et al 2017; for a review, see Wolfe 2002) as well as mobile reading software (e.g., Chen et al 2011;Chen and Lin 2014). Some of these functions directly liaise with digital texts and can automatically retrieve key points from the text, while others allow students to manually input answers or manipulate the texts in order to prompt their deeper thinking.…”

Synchronous Online Peer Tutoring via Video Conferencing Technology: An Exploratory Case Study

“…Because of the comparable student and academic services requirement put in place by SACSCOC (as part of the reaffirmation process for all colleges and universities serviced by the reginal organization) many institutions have begun exploring ways for offering tutoring services online (Park & Kim, 2016).…”

“…For instance, Smarthinking promotes a tutoring pool that consists of educators and other professionals with an average of nine years of experience, many of which have earned advanced degrees beyond the baccalaureate level (Britto & Rush, 2013;Turrentine & MacDonald, 2006). This type of commercial online tutoring program neglects to take advantage of the additional benefits often gained when students or peers provide the tutoring services (Park & Kim, 2016). One of the main benefits that is missed is the concept of learning by teaching.…”