Studies of a Self-Administered Oral Reading Assessment

Reading assessments are most useful when they inform instruction. A prototype mobile-device app called Moby.Read presents a short self-administered test of oral reading fluency. Children read text passages aloud. Spoken responses are scored automatically on the device and displayed for teacher review. First, we report a usability study and a preliminary validation study with 99 children. Usability results are positive and score accuracy is high. Second, we discuss how accurate automatic reading assessment enables new analyses of reading performance (e.g. rate trends over time and within passage) that have not previously been available to guide individual instruction. We present early results of sub-passage and crosspassage results that hold diagnostic promise and discuss their potential to guide reading instruction.