Summarization enhances comprehension and is considered an effective strategy to promote and enhance learning and deep understanding of texts. However, summarization is seldom implemented by teachers in classrooms because the manual evaluation requires a lot of effort and time. Although the need for automated support is stringent, there are only a…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are aimed at promoting acquisition of knowledge and skills by providing relevant and appropriate feedback during students' practice activities. ITSs for literacy instruction commonly assess typed responses using Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms. One step in this direction often requires building a…

Language entails many nested time scales, ranging from the relatively slow scale of cultural evolution to the rapid scale of individual cognition. The nested, multiscale nature of language implies that even simple acts of text production, such as typing a sentence, entail complex interactions involving multiple concurrent processes. As such, text…

Language is of central importance to the field of education because it is a conduit for communicating and understanding information. Therefore, researchers in the field of learning analytics can benefit from methods developed to analyze language both accurately and efficiently. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques can provide such an…

The purpose of this handbook is to provide actionable information to educators, administrators, and researchers about current, available research-based educational technologies that provide adaptive (personalized) instruction to students on literacy, including reading comprehension and writing. This handbook is comprised of chapters by leading…

Reading is a pervasive activity in the classroom, as well as in everyday activities: comprehending text and discourse is crucial to success and survival in the modern world. Nonetheless, many students struggle to understand text at even a basic level, and even more fail to construct deep level understandings of content. Particularly for complex…

To optimize the benefits of game-based practice within Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs), researchers examine how game features influence students' motivation and performance. The current study examined the influence of game features and individual differences (reading ability and learning intentions) on motivation and performance. Participants…

This study investigates how we can effectively predict what type of game a user will choose within the game-based environment iSTART-2. Seventy-seven college students interacted freely with the system for approximately 2 hours. Two models (a baseline and a full model) are compared that include as features the type of games played, previous game…

This study investigates variations in how users exert agency and control over their choice patterns within the game-based ITS, iSTART-2, and how these individual differences relate to performance. Seventy-six college students interacted freely with iSTART-2 for approximately 2 hours. The current work captures and classifies variations in students'…

Metacognitive awareness has been shown to be a critical skill for academic success. However, students often struggle to regulate this ability during learning tasks. The current study investigates how features designed to promote metacognitive awareness can be built into the game-based intelligent tutoring system (ITS) iSTART-2. College students…