Improving child literacy in Africa: Experiments with an automated reading tutor

Mills-Tettey, G. Ayorkor; Mostow, Jack; Dias, M. Bernardine; Sweet, Tracy M.; Belousov, Sarah; Dias, M. Frederick; Gong, Haijun

doi:10.1109/ictd.2009.5426715

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…Pilots of Cognitive Tutor and LISTEN Reading Tutor in the developing world found that students were able to navigate the software fairly quickly (Casas et al 2011;Mills-Tettey et al 2009). However, a study on mobile access in South Africa showed a much higher barrier to basic web use (Gitau et al 2010).…”

Section: Student Basic Ict Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent findings from the Cognitive Tutor project show that computer sharing accounts for over 60 % of use in developing areas, with students leaving their own machines to share a machine instead (Ogan et al 2012). LISTEN and other groups have had similar experiences: computer sharing, even when enough hardware is available, is characteristic of developing world ICT usage (Banerjee et al 2007;Mills-Tettey et al 2009). This has serious implications for the user model, which assumes that each machine is measuring the work of one person.…”

Section: Hardware Sharingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each of these papers noted electricity as a challenge for educational technology, either due to cost issues or inconsistency. Cost issues were noted when using Project LISTEN's Reading Tutor in Zambia, which was the poorest country hosting ITS research (Mills-Tettey et al 2009). In that study, one school out of two was unable to consistently power their computer lab.…”

Section: Electricitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Intelligent Tutoring Systems by and for the Developing World: A Review of Trends and Approaches for Educational Technology in a Global Context

Nye

2014

Int J Artif Intell Educ

157

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As information and communication technology access expands in the developing world, learning technologies have the opportunity to play a growing role to enhance and supplement strained educational systems. Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) offer strong learning gains, but are a class of technology traditionally designed for most-developed countries. Recently, closer consideration has been made to ITS targeting the developing world and to culturally-adapted ITS. This paper presents findings from a systematic literature review that focused on barriers to ITS adoption in the developing world. While ITS were the primary focus of the review, the implications likely apply to a broader range of educational technology as well. The geographical and economic landscape of tutoring publications is mapped out, to determine where tutoring systems research occurs. Next, the paper discusses challenges and promising solutions for barriers to ITS within both formal and informal settings. These barriers include student basic computing skills, hardware sharing, mobile-dominant computing, data costs, electrical reliability, internet infrastructure, language, and culture. Differences and similarities between externally-developed and locally-developed tutoring system research for the developing world are then considered. Finally, this paper concludes with some potential future directions and opportunities for research on tutoring systems and other educational technologies on the global stage.

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Section: Student Basic Ict Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hardware Sharingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Electricitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intelligent Tutoring Systems by and for the Developing World: A Review of Trends and Approaches for Educational Technology in a Global Context

Nye

2014

Int J Artif Intell Educ

157

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…For instance, MIT"s literacy tutor [21] targets pronunciation skills by providing interactive feedback for poorly articulated or mispronounced words. CMU"s project LISTEN [23] is a reading tutor that has been adapted for children in developing countries. It presents a sentence at a time and provides feedback only at the end of a sentence unless the reader is stuck or clicks for help.…”

Section: Speech Technologies For Language Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving literacy in developing countries using speech recognition-supported games on mobile devices

Kumar

Reddy

Tewari

et al. 2012

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Learning to read in a second language is challenging, but highly rewarding. For low-income children in developing countries, this task can be significantly more challenging because of lack of access to high-quality schooling, but can potentially improve economic prospects at the same time. A synthesis of research findings suggests that practicing recalling and vocalizing words for expressing an intended meaning could improve word reading skills -including reading in a second language -more than silent recognition of what the given words mean. Unfortunately, many language learning software do not support this instructional approach, owing to the technical challenges of incorporating speech recognition support to check that the learner is vocalizing the correct word. In this paper, we present results from a usability test and two subsequent experiments that explore the use of two speech recognitionenabled mobile games to help rural children in India read words with understanding. Through a working speech recognition prototype, we discuss two major contributions of this work: first, we give empirical evidence that shows the extent to which productive training (i.e. vocalizing words) is superior to receptive vocabulary training, and discuss the use of scaffolding hints to "unpack" factors in the learner"s linguistic knowledge that may impact reading. Second, we discuss what our results suggest for future research in HCI.

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“…Children can choose stories they want to read and the tutor "listens" and intervenes when the child makes a mistake, gets stuck, or faces difficulty reading certain sections or words. LISTEN was also deployed in Ghana and showed promising results [8]. In a similar project [2], the authors describe another computer assisted learning project targeting English literacy and mathematics.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining web technology and mobile phones to enhance English literacy in underserved communities

Alismail

Siddique

Dias

et al. 2010

Proceedings of the First ACM Symposium on Computing for Development

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Despite the importance of literacy to most aspects of life, underserved communities continue to suffer from low literacy rates; especially for globally prevalent languages such as English. This is particularly problematic since English literacy is an important skill for increased access to income generation and higher education opportunities in these communities. Teaching English in underserved communities can be challenging due to a variety of obstacles. In this paper we report on our work with a primary school in Tanzania, with migrant workers in Doha, and with a school for the deaf in the USA to address some of these challenges using web technology and mobile phones. We developed a web-accessible content authoring tool that teachers can use to create and modify English grammar exercises, and a simple game that students use on a mobile phone to practice the content uploaded from the authoring tool. Our solution is primarily intended to increase the motivation for practicing English grammar among students, and thereby enhance English literacy in underserved communities. Feedback from teachers and students in all of our field studies indicate this solution is affordable and has significant potential to enhance the English classroom and homework experience.

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Improving child literacy in Africa: Experiments with an automated reading tutor

Cited by 17 publications

References 11 publications

Intelligent Tutoring Systems by and for the Developing World: A Review of Trends and Approaches for Educational Technology in a Global Context

Intelligent Tutoring Systems by and for the Developing World: A Review of Trends and Approaches for Educational Technology in a Global Context

Improving literacy in developing countries using speech recognition-supported games on mobile devices

Combining web technology and mobile phones to enhance English literacy in underserved communities

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