Title of Study: Summary of Experimental Study of the Ready to Teach Developmental Electronic Field Trip Reader Project

Author(s): H. Jennings and L. Lucca, ORC Macro

Summary: Maryland Public Television’s Ready to Teach project is aimed at upper elementary and middle school students who lack the reading skills needed to master subject matter in the upper grades.  The program aims to build reading skills while simultaneously covering the curriculum in the social science and language arts content areas. The electronic field trips used this study were web-based resources that included embedded reading supports, offered explicit instruction in reading strategies and were designed to engage students in learning activities that build reading skills.

Sponsoring entity(s): Maryland Public Television

Date conducted: 2004

Location of the study: This study can be accessed at this website.

Setting(s) addressed:

• Classroom

Targeted population(s):

• Middle school students with low reading skills

Primary sources of evidence used in the study or report:

• Student pre- and post-test on unit content
• Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test
• Teacher implementation logs
• Classroom observations
• Focus groups

Primary Technology Application(s) Addressed:

• Electronic learning resources

Major education topic(s) addressed:

• Social studies
• Language arts

Major findings/conclusions:

• Pre- to post-test gains in subject matter knowledge were greater for students participating in the electronic field trips than for students receiving traditional instruction. This trend included students living in poverty.
• Struggling readers showed greater improvement in pre- to post-test subject matter knowledge than other student groups.
• Students participating in electronic field trips demonstrated an improvement in reading comprehension scores relative to students receiving traditional instruction.
• The increase in reading comprehension was greater for struggling readers than for the test group as a whole.

Practical implications of the findings:

• Focus groups reported higher levels of student engagement with the electronic field trips than with regular classroom instruction. This was confirmed by classroom observations.
• The gains in reading comprehension made by students participating in electronic field trips were greater than expected during the time period of the study.  Control students made lower gains than would be expected for that time interval.

Reviewer Comments:
This study used a randomized experimental design, but sample sizes were relatively small, due in part to high student mobility.  Each teacher taught both experimental and control classes to control the effect of teacher quality on student outcomes.