NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY

ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET

Student: Daniel Alan Coffin

THIS FORM MUST BE COMPLETELY FILLED IN

Follow these procedures: If requested by your instructor, please include an assignment cover
sheet. This will become the first page of your assignment. In addition, your assignment header
should include your last name, first initial, course code, dash, and assignment number. This
should be left justified, with the page number right justified. For example:

DoeJXXX0000-1 1

Save a copy of your assignments: You may need to re-submit an assignment at your instruc-
tor’s request. Make sure you save your files in accessible location.

Academic integrity: All work submitted in each course must be your own original work. This
includes all assignments, exams, term papers, and other projects required by your instructor.
Knowingly submitting another person’s work as your own, without properly citing the source of
the work, is considered plagiarism. This will result in an unsatisfactory grade for the work sub-
mitted or for the entire course. It may also result in academic dismissal from the University.

CMP-9601E Dr. Caruso-Woolard

Doctoral Comprehensive Assessment: Pre- Create an Annotated Bibliography and Jus-

Candidacy Prospectus tify Your Topic

<Add student comments here>

Faculty Use Only

<Faculty comments here>

<Faculty Name> <Grade Earned> <Date Graded>

Running head: CoffinDCMP9601E-1 1

Create an Annotated Bibliography and Justify Your Topic

Daniel Coffin

Northcentral University
CoffinDCMP9601E-1 2

Annotated Bibliography

Al-Sulaimi, A., & Al-Shihi, H. (2017). The effects of reading mode (digital vs printed text) on
reading comprehension: A literature review of the key assessment factors. 6th International
Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Accessibility, Muscat,
Oman, 2017. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Publishing.

In the early 21st century, there has been a trend of educators increasingly transitioning from print

to digital reading resources. Concurrent with this shift, the authors stated, there have been many

studies showing gaps in technology adoption between older and younger readers and between

more and less affluent readers. For this reason, the authors wished to investigate whether there

was any substantial difference in how a reader reads a printed text versus how a reader reads a

digital text. The purpose of this paper was to determine what those differences might be so that

they can be taken into consideration when modifying reading curricula to reflect the adoption of

digital text resources. The authors posited four ways in which the choice of reading mode could

affect reading performance: in reading speed, in reader’s attention, in reading workload, and in

reading preference. In reviewing previous studies, the authors noted that digital reading was

slower than print reading and that digital reading was associated in some studies with excessively

wandering attention and a shorter attention span, which frustrate the complex cognitive processes

required to read for comprehension. The author recommended verifying these results in further

research in addition to investigating how the use of digital text resources affected readers’ cogni-

tive load and how a reader’s preference for digital or text reading affected their performance in

both media.

Hess, S.A. (2014). Impact of electronic books on motivation and achievement. The NERA Jour-
nal, 49(2), 35-39.

The teachers at a small rural Maine elementary school determined to explore the effect of digital

reading resources on reading motivation and reading achievement for their students. Thirty-two
CoffinDCMP9601E-1 3

4th grade students were provided with Nook devices loaded with sixty-two titles over the course

of the year. The previous year’s 4th grade was used as a control group for comparison. The de-

vices were used during guided reading, read-alouds, and for student sustained silent reading.

Baseline data was gathered through a reading motivation survey and state standardized reading

assessments. At the end of the study, the average student motivation score was about 4.5 higher

for the experimental group than it was for the control group. When results were examined by

gender, experimental males scores were about 5.4 higher than control males, and experimental

female scores were 4.47 higher than control females. The reading achievement mean score for

the experimental group increased by 5.44 points for the year, while the mean score for the con-

trol group increased only 1.68 points over the same time. While there was no significant differ-

ence in mean scores when compared by gender for the control group, for the experimental group

there was an increase in the mean score of 8.97 for males and 3.87 for females, indicating that

for males in the experimental group, a noticeable gap between male and female reading perfor-

mance was decreased. While the study used a small population, the results were encouraging

and the authors encouraged further exploration along the same lines with larger populations, as

well as exploration into factors that might explain why male students would respond more posi-

tively to digital reading than female students.

Leu, D. J., Forzani, E., & Kennedy, C. (2015). Income inequality and the online reading gap.
The Reading Teacher, 68(6), 422-427.

In this study, the authors reviews findings that indicated a large and growing achievement gap

between students at the top and bottom 10% of family income, while the achievement gap be-

tween black and white students is growing smaller. The authors noted that the data supporting

these findings only accounted for “offline” reading performance (that is, assessed with a paper-
CoffinDCMP9601E-1 4

based test). The authors wished to determine if there was a similar gap between affluent and less

affluent readers in “online” reading performance as well. The authors conducted their research in

Connecticut, the state with the greatest income disparity between wealthy and poor families in

the country. The author controlled for measures of offline literacy (the state reading and writing

assessments), as well as pretest differences in prior knowledge. The authors constructed a fully

enclosed suite of online tools which study participants used to complete two performance-based

online reading tasks, guided by a digital avatar, who text-messaged participants with instructions.

The results of the study were twofold, first indicating an online reading achievement gap based

on income inequality completely separate from the offline reading achievement gap, with a very

large effect size, and second, indicating that neither the wealthy nor the poor school districts par-

ticipating in the study were particularly skilled in online reading achievement. Deficiencies in

performance appear in all four major skills levels established by the authors, including locating

information, evaluating information, synthesizing information, and communicating information.

The article ends with suggestions for instruction specific to online reading achievement.

Rasmusson, M., & Aberg-Bengtsson, L. (2015). Does performance in digital reading relate to
computer game playing? A study of factor structure and gender patterns in 15-year-olds’ read-
ing literacy preference. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 59(6), 691-709

In exploring data collected from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examination, the authors pre-

pared a study to see if a digital reading factor could be discerned in addition to an overall read-

ing factor, to determine if this factor, if identified, could relate to gender, and finally, to explore

whether time spent playing computer games could explain gender differences, if there were any,

in digital reading performance. To do so, the authors organized the schools contributing PSA

data into a stratified sampling frame with respect to school type, size, and other characteristics.
CoffinDCMP9601E-1 5

Thereafter, students were chosen from each type of school and type of municipality, rendering a

population of 4,567 students. Of these, 943 boys and 978 girls from 179 schools (approximately

42% of the total students) completed both the paper and computer-based reading assessments,

and these 1,921 students were used as subjects for the study. Participants were given question-

naires about how often they played single-player or collaborative computer games. Using a

structural equation modeling technique, the authors determined that girls’ performance in over-

all reading was greater than that of boys. In digital reading, however, there was a significant dif-

ference between achievement in favor of boys. The authors then determined that this effect was

mediated by the game-playing factor. This would seem to suggest that factors outside of tradi-

tional reading instruction, such as visual-spatial acuity training, might help students to better

perform in digital reading.

Singer, L.M., & Alexander, P.A. (2017). Reading across mediums: Effects of reading digital
and print texts on comprehension and calibration. The Journal of Experimental Education,
85(1), 155-172.

The purpose of this study was to determine what differences, if any, exist in comprehension

when students read digital or print texts. In order to do so, ninety undergraduate psychology stu-

dents who were determined to be “digital natives” or readers who have always had access to

digital texts were invited to participate in a study wherein they would read eight texts related to

their coursework - two each of digital and print texts, and two each of book excerpts and news-

paper-style text, all addressing the topic of childhood psychological ailments - and then com-

plete a demographic questionnaire, an assessment of topic knowledge, a medium-preference

survey, and a comprehension assessment related to the reading selections. The results indicated

that the majority of the participants did not have much background knowledge related to the

topic of the texts. Furthermore, students indicated in their response to the questionnaire that they
CoffinDCMP9601E-1 6

overwhelmingly preferred to read digitally, as had been expected by the researchers. The partic-

ipants indicated that almost 88% of them owned a digital reading device and almost 96% of

them accessed text digitally at least once a day. The authors determined that the participants did

not show any difference in their ability to discern main ideas of texts between medium or text

type. For the comprehension question related to key details, however, the authors noticed a

main effect for medium as well as an interaction between medium and type. Participant perfor-

mance on the key details question was higher when the participants were reading in print, with

an ever-greater disparity in favor of print when the text was a book excerpt. The authors recom-

mended following up to determine whether these results might be due to the readers struggle to

recollect what was read due to having to scroll to take in whole paragraphs, and other such navi-

gational issues.
CoffinDCMP9601E-1 7

For my dissertation research, I would like to explore whether a change in reading instruc-

tion from traditional instruction focusing solely on phonics, fluency, comprehension strategies

and vocabulary development to a new model incorporating evaluation of digital text resources,

multi-tasking, and visual-spatial acuity training would improve digital reading performance rela-

tive to print reading performance.

The sources I have read and cited in my annotated bibliography above indicate that there

is, in fact, a difference in what happens in the mind of a reader of digital text and a reader of

print text. While reading in print and reading digitally do use some of the same cognitive strate-

gies for making meaning of text, digital reading seems to draw upon other resources or skills, in-

cluding cognitive load used for multitasking in locating and comparing information presented in

different windows, navigating digital resources, and visual-spatial acuity in order to manipulate

digital text resources.

The works I have read thus far would seem to suggest that while educators are increas-

ingly incorporating digital resources into their curricula, they are being treated essentially as re-

placements for print resources, rather than as unique texts that call for different skills and strate-

gies to make sense of them. If educators are presenting students with digital resources and essen-

tially the same reading instruction that was used when only print resources were available, this

might help to explain some of the mixed results of the adoption of digital text resources, includ-

ing differences in digital reading achievement when gender is considered, as well as study find-

ings that indicate digital reading is associated with distracted reading and shallower understand-

ing of text.
CoffinDCMP9601E-1 8

I imagine that there is little to no chance of the rate of digital text adoption slowing, let

alone reversing, in the decades to come. Digital text is here, and schools will adopt it, for eco-

nomic and environmental reasons, if not for the benefit of students. If changes to instruction can

help digital reading to live up to its early promise, I imagine that would be a worthy contribution

to literacy education research.