The objective in the current paper is to examine the processes of how our research team negotiated meaning using an iterative design approach as we established, developed, and refined a rubric to capture comprehension processes and strategies evident in students' verbal protocols. The overarching project comprises multiple data sets, multiple…

Reading comprehension is key to knowledge acquisition and to reinforcing memory for previous information. While reading, a mental representation is constructed in the reader's mind. The mental model comprises the words in the text, the relations between the words, and inferences linking to concepts in prior knowledge. The automated model of…

The ability to automatically assess the quality of paraphrases can be very useful for facilitating literacy skills and providing timely feedback to learners. Our aim is twofold: a) to automatically evaluate the quality of paraphrases across four dimensions: lexical similarity, syntactic similarity, semantic similarity and paraphrase quality, and…

For decades, educators have relied on readability metrics that tend to oversimplify dimensions of text difficulty. This study examines the potential of applying advanced artificial intelligence methods to the educational problem of assessing text difficulty. The combination of hierarchical machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) is…

This article provides a commentary within the special issue, Integration: The Keystone of Comprehension. According to most contemporary frameworks, a driving force in comprehension is the reader's ability to generate the links among the words and sentences (ideas) in the texts and between the ideas in the text and what the readers already know. As…

Objective: To develop novel, scalable, and valid literacy profiles for identifying limited health literacy patients by harnessing natural language processing. Data Source: With respect to the linguistic content, we analyzed 283 216 secure messages sent by 6941 diabetes patients to physicians within an integrated system's electronic portal.…

The Design Implementation Framework, or DIF, is a design approach that evaluates learner and user experience at multiple points in the development of intelligent tutoring systems. In this chapter, we explore how DIF was used to make system modifications to iSTART, a game-based intelligent tutoring system for reading comprehension. Using DIF as a…

A key writing skill is the capability to clearly convey desired meaning using available linguistic knowledge. Consequently, writers must select from a large array of idioms, vocabulary terms that are semantically equivalent, and discourse features that simultaneously reflect content and allow readers to grasp meaning. In many cases, a simplified…

Theories of discourse argue that comprehension depends on the coherence of the learner's mental representation. Our aim is to create a reliable automated representation to estimate readers' level of comprehension based on different productions, namely self-explanations and answers to open-ended questions. Previous work relied on Cohesion Network…

Open-ended comprehension questions are a common type of assessment used to evaluate how well students understand one of multiple documents. Our aim is to use natural language processing (NLP) to infer the level and type of inferencing within readers' answers to comprehension questions using linguistic and semantic features within their responses.…

Computer-based learning environments (CBLEs) provide unprecedented opportunities for personalized learning at scale. One such system, iSTART (Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking) is an adaptive, game-based tutoring system for reading comprehension. This paper describes how efforts to increase personalized learning have…

With increased availability of information in modern societies, individuals are often faced with complex decisions regarding how to integrate and judge the veracity of available information. Generally, these issues have been approached using computational techniques to "detect" and "reduce" the spread of information across…

Writing is a crucial means of communicating with others and thus vital to success and survival in modern society. This article provides an overview of recent research and key findings about writing, including the roles of cognitive and social processes during writing, and educational research on how to improve writing proficiency. Writing…

Virtual learning environments (VLE) are increasingly used at-scale in educational contexts to facilitate teaching and promote learning, and the data they produce can be used for educational research purposes. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology has repeatedly emphasized the importance of using evidence to…

Literacy is a critically important and contemporary issue for educators, scientists, and politicians. Efforts to overcome the challenges associated with illiteracy, and the subsequent development of literate societies, are closely related to those of poverty reduction and sustainable human development. In this paper, the authors examine literacy…