A cluster randomized control field trial of the ABRACADABRA web-based reading technology: replication and extension of basic findings.

Noella A Piquette,Philip C Abrami,Robert S Savage

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01413

Noella A Piquette, Philip C Abrami + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01413

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Abstract

The present paper reports a cluster randomized control trial evaluation of teaching using ABRACADABRA (ABRA), an evidence-based and web-based literacy intervention (http://abralite.concordia.ca) with 107 kindergarten and 96 grade 1 children in 24 classes (12 intervention 12 control classes) from all 12 elementary schools in one school district in Canada. Children in the intervention condition received 10–12 h of whole class instruction using ABRA between pre- and post-test. Hierarchical linear modeling of post-test results showed significant gains in letter-sound knowledge for intervention classrooms over control classrooms. In addition, medium effect sizes were evident for three of five outcome measures favoring the intervention: letter-sound knowledge (d= +0.66), phonological blending (d = +0.52), and word reading (d = +0.52), over effect sizes for regular teaching. It is concluded that regular teaching with ABRA technology adds significantly to literacy in the early elementary years.

Highlights

There is widespread deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in schools around the world (Cuban, 2001; Chambers et al, 2008)
Results of this study found that the students who received the ABRA interventions showed significant advantages in phonological awareness and grapheme-to-phoneme knowledge
The results indicated that ABRA produced statistically significant effects on measures of letter-sound knowledge

Summary

Introduction

There is widespread deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in schools around the world (Cuban, 2001; Chambers et al, 2008). Several reviews of research exist that included experimental and quasi-experimental studies These studies have generally identified small positive effect sizes for ICT use on literacy (e.g., Ehri et al, 2001; MacArthur et al, 2001; Blok et al, 2002; Cheung and Slavin, 2012). These authors are cautiously optimistic about the educational use of ICTs to produce small positive effects on literacy outcomes, when technologies are deployed in close conjunction with teacher’s non-technology based efforts to improve literacy (e.g., Cheung and Slavin, 2012) These overall findings are perhaps nuanced by a number of recent findings. Most of the popular programs evaluated to date for children beginning to read, for example, do not stand up well to such close scrutiny of their content validity (Grant et al, 2012)

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