Identification of Reading Difficulties by a Digital Game-Based Assessment Technology

Abstract

<jats:p> Computerized game-based assessment (GBA) system for screening reading difficulties may provide substantial time and cost benefits over traditional paper-and-pencil assessment while providing means also to individually adapt learning content in educational games. To study the reliability and validity of a GBA system to identify struggling readers performing below a standard deviation from mean in paper-and-pencil test either in raw scores and grade-normative scores, a large-scale study with first to fourth grade students ( N = 723) was conducted, where GBA was administrated as a group test by tablet devices. Overall, the results indicated that the GBA can be successfully used to identify students with reading difficulties with acceptable reliability. Although the reliability of the results were at a very good level overall, the identification was even better in the reading fluency than in reading accuracy and in terms of raw scores than in grade-normative scores. These findings are the first to demonstrate the promise of GBA in assessing reading skills reliably and in a cost-efficient manner in classrooms. Furthermore, the developed GBA is directly applicable to an educational game for successfully supporting reading development of learners with varying levels of reading skill. </jats:p>

A mobile game as a support tool for children with severe difficulties in reading and spelling

“…Boys were clearly overrepresented in the sample, which is probably because reading difficulties are more common among boys than girls (Rutter et al, 2004). Data collected in another Finnish study, ReadAll (Hautala et al, 2020), were used as the reference in defining the criterion scores. The mean age of the participants at the time of the pretest was 7.64 years ( SD = 0.37).…”

Speech and Language Therapy Service for Multilingual Children: Attitudes and Approaches across Four European Countries

“…Even when the heritage language of the child to be assessed is not spoken by the SLT, computerized language screenings may facilitate the assessment of heritage language skills in multilingual children with the help of visual, audio, and video recordings [51]. The application of modern technologies in language diagnostics can have a motivating effect on the child to be tested due to the attractiveness of the testing material [52]. Possibly, computerized screening instruments that are administered online rather than in the presence of test administrators (i.e., remotely) may enable facilitated access to language assessment that does not require logistical effort [53].…”

Impact of ict on writing and reading skills

“…E-books, as well as interactive stories or online reading, contribute significantly to the advancement of learning to read, write and develop different skills, as well as to achieve the autonomy of students (SANTOS DA COSTA; ALBERTI, 2016; LIU; KO, 2019; POLIHRONOV, 2019; BADILLO-JIMÉNEZ; IGUARÁN-JIMÉNEZ, 2020). Furthermore, we can highlight that the use of digital games favours reading development (HAUTALA et al, 2020).…”