InSTIL/ICALL 2004 Symposium on Computer Assisted Learning June 17-19, 2004 Venice, Italy

Improving the Help Selection Policy in a Reading Tutor that Listens

Cecily Heiner, Joseph Beck, Jack Mostow

Project LISTEN, Carnegie Mellon University RI-NSH, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

What type of oral reading assistance is most effective for a given student on a given word? We analyze 189,039 randomized trials of a within-subject experiment to compare the effects of several types of help in the 2002-2003 version of Project LISTEN’s Reading Tutor. The independent variable is the type of help given on a word. The outcome variable is the student’s performance at the next encounter of that word, as measured by automatic speech recognition. Training a help selection policy sensitive to student or word level improves this outcome by a projected 4% - a substantial effect for picking a single better intervention.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Heiner, Cecily / Beck, Joseph / Mostow, Jack (2004): "Improving the help selection policy in a reading tutor that listens", In ICALL-2004, paper 046.