iStart: A Web-Based Reading Strategy Intervention That Improves Students's Science Comprehension

This study examined the impact of an automated reading strategy trainer called the Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) for improving students’ reading comprehension of a science text. iSTART is an interactive trainer that utilizes animated agents to provide reading strategy instruction. The program contains both vicarious and interactive modules that provide adaptive feedback on the quality of students’ self-explanations. Thirtyeight children from an east coast middle school were assessed in terms of their prior knowledge, reading ability, and reading strategy knowledge. Half of the participants were provided with iSTART training. Comprehension of a science passage was assessed with text-based and bridging-inference questions. The results indicated that children with less prior knowledge about reading strategies performed significantly better on text-based questions if they received iSTART training. Conversely for high-strategy knowledge students, iSTART improved comprehension over control students for bridging–inference questions. The results support the need for user-adaptive intelligent tutoring systems.