Enhancing reading skills through adaptive e-learning

Abstract

PurposeE-learning is part of instructional design and has opened a whole world of new possibilities in terms of learning and teaching. The purpose of this paper is to develop an adaptive e-learning platform that enhances skills from primary school to university learners. Two purposes converge here: a pedagogical one – offering new possibilities, especially in terms of teaching scenarios (blended learning); and a research one – confirming the effectiveness of an adaptive e-learning tool in the case of individualized cross-disciplinary competences, such as comprehension of implicit information in written texts (French).Design/methodology/approachThe case study presented here concerns primary-school learners using the Implicit module of TACIT adaptive e-learning tool over the 2016-2017 academic year.FindingsThis paper gives a first positive answer to the effectiveness of such a tool in this specific context. This pedagogical effectiveness is more pronounced for low-level pupils, especially for girls and for older pupils (CM1/CM2, respectively, fourth/fifth grade).Originality/valueIn this case study, the module comes from an existing platform, created by the TACIT research group. The adaptive environment was created by using the Item Response Theory models and, more precisely, the Rasch model.