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2014 CALL Conference
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be
Students use different cognitive strategies while reading online texts and require
strategic knowledge to locate and comprehend information
found in these electronic
reading environments. Because of the distinct features of online reading, the traditionally
employed think-
aloud protocols might not be sufficient to collect students’ online reading
strategy data. This study therefore also used a screen-capturing technique to document
s
tudents’ online reading strategy use and compared these two strategy collection
tools. This study sought to asnwer the following research questions: (1) What are
the
researchers’
challenges in capturing online reading strategy data? and (2) Is screen-
capturing a better data collection tool than think-aloud?
The
reading
tasks
involved
were
(1) a closed
reading
task in
which
students sought
information
about
a
Six
Flags
Theme
Park’s
historical
background, owner, and jobs; and (2) an open task that invited
students to surf freely
online to find a summer job for a working holiday; they were asked to describe the
job and find tourist attractions they could visit during their job breaks. Twenty EFL
intermediate first-year university students participated in this study. The experiment
lasted four hours. During the first
hour of the experiment, participants were trained to
think
aloud
and
record
their
surfing
process
via
ViewletCam,
a screen
capturing software tool. The
researcher also
used
that
time
to
ensure that
students’
voices could be successfully recorded during their navigation process. The
second hour was devoted to a closed reading task in which students were asked to
search a designated website to find answers to four questions about a theme park in the
United
States: when the theme
park
first
opened,
the name
of
its
owner, the
park’s
revenue, and how much entry tickets cost. During the third hour,
students were asked to complete an open reading task
about finding a summer job
they would like to have as a working holiday. Students were then guided to find solutions
by using search engines, gathering information, synthesizing information,
and finally
reaching conclusions. During the final hour, the instructor taught students how to save
and transfer the ViewletCam-generated files of all of their navigation movements to the
instructor’s server for analysis. Students
were also asked to write their reflections on the
process of completing these two online reading tasks.
The researcher faced three challenges in collecting online reading strategy data. One
came from students’ lack of familiarity with verbalizing their thinking processes. Students
were shy about speaking into the microphone as if they were talking to themselves. The
instructor had to constantly remind and encourage students
to verbalize their thought
processes out loud. The second challenge was the huge amount of data to be sorted.
Each task lasted for one full hour, so the coding of the data required a considerable
amount of time and effort. The two raters had to go through the data, transcribe it
verbatim, find significant movements
and assign categories, and then go through the
data several times before they reached consensus. The third challenge was that the
coding scheme adapted from previous studies (Coiro & Dobler, 2007; Coiro et al., 2010)
was insufficient as the sole source for coding categories. These four major categories
were Locate, Evaluate, Synthesize, and Communicate. During the process of coding and
re-reading
for significant movements, the pre-determined categories could not account
for all of the students’ statements or navigational paths. New categories emerged from
reviewing the student data.
In conclusion, findings of this study will help instructors and researchers design
asses
sment tools to measure students’ online reading comprehension.
Results of this
study will help teachers expand their range of reading assessment practices to tap the
skills and strategies that students need to comprehend information in the digital age.
