Project Activities
VSTF separates phrases and clauses onto short, separate lines. It also uses a cascading pattern and different colors to highlight active verbs. The result is a streamlined column of text that makes reading easier and more efficient. In this project, classrooms of students will be randomly assigned either to read their language arts text in VSTF on an iPad or Chromebook, or to read their language arts text in traditional block format on an iPad or Chromebook. Researchers will also examine whether reading VSTF on an iPad or on a Chromebook makes a difference in how well the intervention works to improve students' reading and writing outcomes.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This project will take place in urban schools in southern California.
Sample
In this study, participants will include approximately 4,800 students in 7th and 8th grade, as well as their 57 teachers.
Intervention
VSTF is a technology that visually scaffolds texts so that phrases and clauses are displayed in patterns that indicate sentence structure. VSTF uses natural language processing techniques to automatically parse sentences and arrange them into a streamlined column of text that allows more efficient eye movement and syntactic processing. The VSTF intervention also includes professional development for teachers. Teachers can implement the intervention on iPads or Chromebooks. VSTF will support readers in skimming text, lexical processing, and text comprehension.
Research design and methods
Researchers will use a randomized control trial to study the efficacy on VSTF 7th and 8th grade students' reading and writing outcomes. The research team will randomize classrooms within teacher, so each teacher will have both treatment and control classrooms. Additionally, half of the schools in the study will implement the intervention on iPads and the other half will implement on Chromebooks. Students in the VSTF condition will receive regular language arts curriculum and all reading materials digitally in VSTF. Students will read in VSTF for 50 minutes each week. Additionally, teachers will provide explicit instruction in language structure. Students in the control condition will use the same curriculum as students in the treatment condition. Also, readings will be presented digitally, but not in VSTF. Students in the control classrooms will read for 50 minutes a week and will receive the same explicit instruction from teachers as students in the treatment classrooms.
Control condition
Students randomly assigned to the control condition will receive the same texts and same instruction as students in the treatment condition. They will also read their texts on iPads or Chromebooks, but in block text formatting instead of in VSTF.
Key measures
Student measures will include grade point average in language arts and scores on the California English Language Development Test and the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Teacher measures will include the Teacher Practices inventory and the Measuring Teacher Content Knowledge for Teaching Elementary Rescore Items. The team will adapt the Pathway Observation Measure to assess the quantity and process of implementation of the intervention.
Data analytic strategy
Researchers will use hierarchical linear modeling to assess the impact of VTSF on student outcomes with students at level 1 and teachers at level 2. The research team will include interaction terms between the treatment condition and the iPad/Chromebook condition to examine whether the effect of VSTF varies depending on technology. The research team will conduct a cost analysis to examine the cost of the VSTF intervention as compared to reading text digitally in block formatting.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The products of this project include evidence of the efficacy of the VSTF intervention for 7th and 8th grade students, and peer-reviewed publications.
Tate, T. P., Collins, P., Xu, Y., Yau, J. C., Krishnan, J., Prado, Y., ... & Warschauer, M. (2019). Visual-Syntactic Text Format: Improving Adolescent Literacy. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1-18.
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigator: Collins, Penelope; Farkas, George
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
