Representing the AdultEd research team, Dr. John Sabatini, Dr. Art Graesser, Dr. Xiangen Hu, and John Hollander presented their research at the meeting of the International Association for Computerized Adaptive Testing.

This team presented a symposium titled "Developing a system that connects learning and adaptive testing for adults learning to read,” featuring four interconnected research presentations. These talks described a technological and statistical framework for integrating two systems: an intelligent tutoring system and a reading skills assessment battery. The two systems were initially developed separately and now, through a grant from the US DOE Institute for Education Research, are being brought together. To discuss this work and its implications, we will a) describe an adaptive intelligent tutoring system designed to support reading comprehension gains in adults with low literacy, b) describe a multi-stage assessment system used to measure a specific set of component reading skills to differentiate between struggling and proficient readers, c) seek to establish a technological and logistical framework for linking adaptive assessment and instruction and d) report empirical efforts to psychometrically align the above systems and frameworks.

Hollander, J., Sabatini, J., Graesser, A. (2022, September) Connecting assessment and learning in the inner loop. Presented at the 8th Meeting of the International Association for Computerized Adaptive testing.

Hu, X., Sabatini, J., Graesser, J., Hollander, J. (2022, September). Designing innovative tasks and test environments: Opportunities and challenges in connecting assessment and instruction. Presented at the 8th Meeting of the International Association for Computerized Adaptive testing.

Sabatini, J., Weeks, J., O’Reilly, T.  (2022, September). A stage-based computer adaptive system combining reading components and scenario based assessments in a longitudinal study. Presented at the 8th Meeting of the International Association for Computerized Adaptive testing.

Graesser, A., Hu, X., Sabatini, J., Hollander, J. (2022, September). AutoTutor for Adult Reading Comprehension: An intelligent tutoring system. Presented at the 8th Meeting of the International Association for Computerized Adaptive testing.

Representing the AdultEd research team, Dr. John Sabatini and John Hollander presented their research at the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading..

The first presentation was titled “Item-level differences for adults in reading component skill assessments.” In this presentation, the researchers aimed to examine how the psycholinguistic properties of assessment items contribute to reading subskills and overall reading comprehension in adult literacy learners. In their research, they administered a reading subcomponent battery to adults which was developed, tested, and scaled with readers in grades 5-12. They contrasted the relationship on item-level performance between adult and school-aged samples. In the process, they also examined how the word frequency impacts item performance in both samples.

The second presentation was titled “The relation of reading components to comprehension in adult education students.” In this presentation, the researchers examined the relationship between reading components and reading comprehension in adult education students. They administered a six-subtest, computerized battery of reading components adapted for use with adults in basic education and in community college. The components are aligned with previous research on reading challenges in adults and adolescents that have been targeted in instructional interventions. The researchers also explored concurrent validity of the reading components to clinical subtests (e.g., Woodcock-Johnson) to examine the nomological network of skills.

Hollander, J. M., Sabatini, J., Smith, E. H., & O’Reilly, T. (2022, July). Item-level differences for adults in reading component skill assessments. 29th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. 

Sabatini, J., Hollander, J. M., Smith, E. H., & O’Reilly, T. (2022, July). The relation of reading components to comprehension in adult education students. 12th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.

Representing the AdultEd research team, Dr. John Sabatini and John Hollander presented their research at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse.

One presentation was titled “Foundational reading skills and learner characteristics in an adult literacy intervention.” In this presentation, they surveyed how adult literacy learners are characterized by their diversity, in terms of both educational histories and cognitive skillsets. In their research, they examined difference score data from a component reading skills assessment battery bookending an adult literacy intervention including an adult literacy-focused intelligent tutoring system. By clustering learners based on their performance characteristics during intervention, researchers were able to observe whether gains were made in foundational reading skills, revealing for whom this intervention might be most (or least) effective. 

The other presentation was titled, “How Lexical Properties of Test Items Impact Adolescent and Adult Learner Text Processing.” The purpose of this study was to examine what lexical properties of foundational skills test items reveal about text processing in adolescents and adults. In the US, significant proportions of both populations failed to achieve comprehension proficiency sufficient to succeed in higher education contexts. In this study, the researchers took a deep dive into the surface code linguistic knowledge and processing of adolescents and adults who have struggled to achieve reading comprehension proficiency.

 Hollander, J., Sabatini, J., Graesser, A., Greenberg, D., O’Reilly, T., & Frijters, J. (July, 2022). Foundational reading skills and learner characteristics in an adult literacy intervention. Presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse. 

Sabatini, J., Hollander, J., Graesser, A., & O’Reilly, T., (2022, July). How Lexical Properties of Test Items Impact Adolescent and Adult Learner Text Processing. Presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse.