SBIR Phase I: Personalized Reading Instruction

This SBIR Phase I project proposes to discover digital methods to personalize reading instruction such that students understand more when they read, retain knowledge, and build lasting skills. The academic research on reading supports the claim that active reading strategies that incorporate quality instruction can benefit students. However, instruction is usually not personalized to meet the needs of specific students, and even when an educator works 1:1 with a student they can only interpret a limited number of signals from a student to help guide instruction. The objective of the project is to take in several inputs when students read digitally and investigate whether personalized reading instruction can effectively be created and delivered for students working with any text. The broader impact of this Phase I project will be to improve how students read, and therefore how they learn. Two-thirds of students in the U.S. are struggling readers; they cannot understand the main idea when they read. These students are four times more likely to drop out of school. Difficulty reading extends to all subjects; poor readers have only a 14% chance of success in math and 1% chance of success in science. Reading is the heart of education. It is the most important skill we learn in school. People who read critically have more success in school, obtain high quality jobs, and are able to contribute more to expand social resources. Thirty million students in the U.S. struggle to read, so reducing that number by even 10 or 20 percent would mean a huge improvement in the educational and financial opportunities for millions of Americans. Globally the problem is even larger, and digital devices give us the opportunity to reach over a billion people worldwide. Researchers and educators have been trying to solve the "reading gap" for decades, but only now does the technology exist to make this possible.