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iSTART (Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking) is an automated strategy trainer designed to help students become better readers via multi-media technologies. Pedagogical agents provide students with interactive and adaptive training to use active reading strategies. Overview High-school students in the United States are falling behind students in other nations on various measures of academic achievement, and in particular, on measures of reading comprehension. Danielle McNamara and the Center for Cognitive Science and Educational Practice are developing and testing the effectiveness of various reading strategy programs designed to improve high school students' comprehension of their science texts. The project incorporates a team of approximately 20 scientists from multidisciplinary fields including cognitive psychology, computer science, linguistics, and education. The project is funded by a $3,196,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (IERI) and a $1,770,514 grant from the Institute of Education Sciences. Self-Explanation Reading Training iSTART is based on a modified version of an intervention called SERT (Self-Explanation Reading Training). SERT is designed to teach students how to get the most out of their reading. SERT utilizes the latest research on reading and comprehension strategies. Students learn explain text to themselves while using reading strategies such as paraphrasing, comprehension monitoring, predicting, elaborating, forming bridging inferences, and logic. Research has shown that students trained to use the SERT strategy outperform control participants on measures of comprehension of difficult science passages. Trained students perform better on science course exams. More importantly, the benefits of SERT are greatest for students with low knowledge that is, benefits are greatest for students who need the most help. The iSTART Trainer iStart is a computerized strategy trainer that uses animated agents to teach reading strategies. The trainer consists of three sections: introduction, demonstration, and practice. In the introduction, the various strategies are explained by an animated teacher to two animated students. The user is given short tests after each strategy has been taught. iSTART provides the student with feedback on both the type and quality of the explanations they generate. Future versions of the program will incorporate other strategy interventions and an individual differences assessment module, which will assess student characteristics and tailor the training to particular student needs.
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