Date

10-2014

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Chair

Leah Kinniburgh

Keywords

ebooks, mobile devices, multimodal text, reading comprehension, second grade

Disciplines

Curriculum and Instruction | Education | Educational Methods | Elementary Education and Teaching | Instructional Media Design

Abstract

The increased accessibility of technological devices has made it easier for educators to make use of multimodal tools in the classroom. Although educational technology has been vastly researched, one area that is not reflected in the literature is the use of eBooks that are read on mobile digital reading devices and their impact on the performance of literacy skills of lower elementary age students. This quasi-experimental, nonrandom, pretest/posttest control group study examined the results of reading an eBook on an Apple iPad and its impact (if any) on reading comprehension skills of second grade students. This quasi-experiment included a treatment group who read eBooks on the Apple iPad for a series of six weeks, and the control group, who read the same books in traditional print for six weeks. The measurement for both pretest and posttest was the reading comprehension portion of the Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM). The research questions examined were: (a) What is the difference in the reading comprehension scores of second grade students on the CBM when using eBooks compared to students who use printed text? (b) What is the difference in the reading comprehension skills of second grade students who use the multimodal features of the iPad consistently when they read eBooks when compared to students who do not use the multimodal features each time? These data were analyzed using an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA).

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