CBT To Enhance Adult Literacy Through In-Depth Assessments and Automated Guiance

In response to this Phase 1 SBIR solicitation, Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes to research a new technological approach for enhancing adult literacy. Our objective is to design and prototype a CBT system that integrates pedagogically sound instructional methods with automated assessment technologies to accommodate the special needs of the adult literacy students. Out technical objectives represent a development approach between simplistic CBT and traditional ITS. This approach does not require the extensive effort and impracticalities of student modeling that are required in traditional ITS. Instead, our approach enhances a (simplistic) CBT environment with robust, in-depth assessments and automated guidance techniques. IAI proposes to: (1) enhance a CBT environment with multiple, automated, in-depth assessments of student progress in vocabulary, reading comprehension, fluency, and accuracy; (2) establish a reading competence "ladder" of the materials in the CBT curriculum; and (3) build an automated guidance tool to match individual students with the materials that best suit their current reading competence and their "zone of optimal learnability". Additionally, we propose to ease the authoring effort by integrating an authoring tool that automatically places new materials in the proper location within the "ladder-like" structure of the curriculum.