Online research and learning in science: A one-to-one laptop comparison in two states using performance based assessments

Previous studies of one-to-one computing programs have suffered from several methodological limitations and produced mixed results. Especially surprising is that previous studies have not evaluated students' ability to use the Internet to learn from online information. This study evaluated the ability of 1129 seventh grade students, in two different states, to conduct online research and learn in science. One state, Maine, had implemented a one-to-one program for several years, beginning in seventh grade. It ranked 33rd (out of 50 states) in median family income (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). The other, Connecticut, had yet to implement a similar policy and ranked 4th among all states in median family income. Stratified random sampling was used to select participating students who were representative of each state. The primary measure was a performance-based assessment of online research and learning, with demonstrated validity and reliability. Students completed two online research projects in science on two different days. Results for students in the two states were compared using regression models that conditioned on student prior knowledge and school level indicators of socioeconomic status and teacher experience. The adjusted mean scores for online research and learning were generally significantly higher for Maine, the state that provided laptops to middle and high school students. The overall effect size was comparable to about a half a year of annual growth, the same amount of time that students had access to one-to-one laptops in their classrooms. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for technology investments by state and local educational agencies, especially in light of the new educational standards beginning to appear in Australia, the United States, and other nations. Limitations are also explored. A low SES state (1:1 laptops) did better in science than a high SES state without.Students in both states succeeded on only 50% of online research and learning tasks.The greatest difference between these two states appeared in online locating tasks.

[1]  Michael O. Martin,et al.  PIRLS 2016 Assessment Framework. , 2013 .

[2]  Maureen McLaughlin,et al.  The Common Core: Teaching K-5 Students to Meet the Reading Standards , 2012 .

[3]  C. Lewis,et al.  Instant Messaging, Literacies, and Social Identities , 2005 .

[4]  Diether W. Beuermann,et al.  Home Computers and Child Outcomes: Short-Term Impacts from a Randomized Experiment in Peru , 2012 .

[5]  Sue Bennett,et al.  The 'digital natives' debate: A critical review of the evidence , 2008, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[6]  J. Pellegrino,et al.  Professional Development in Integrating Technology Into Teaching and Learning: Knowns, Unknowns, and Ways to Pursue Better Questions and Answers , 2007 .

[7]  Helen R. Quinn,et al.  A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas , 2013 .

[8]  J. Rouet,et al.  The Impact of Presentation Format, Task Assignment, and Prior Knowledge on Students' Comprehension of Multiple Online Documents , 2007 .

[9]  Cynthia Shanahan,et al.  What Is Disciplinary Literacy and Why Does It Matter? , 2012 .

[10]  Maya B. Eagleton,et al.  Teaching Internet literacy strategies : The hero inquiry project , 2003 .

[11]  H. Braun,et al.  America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future. , 2007 .

[12]  Miika Marttunen,et al.  Working on Understanding During Collaborative Online Reading , 2012 .

[13]  Jaekyung Lee.  Racial and Ethnic Achievement Gap Trends: Reversing the Progress Toward Equity? , 2002 .

[14]  D. Leu,et al.  The New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension: Rethinking the Reading Achievement Gap , 2015 .

[15]  Carita Kiili,et al.  Individual Differences in the New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension , 2016 .

[16]  Els Kuiper,et al.  The Web as a source of information for students in K-12 education , 2008 .

[17]  Sean F. Reardon.  The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor , 2011 .

[18]  Clare Wood,et al.  The effect of text messaging on 9- and 10-year-old children's reading, spelling and phonological processing skills , 2011, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[19]  E. Kuiper,et al.  Teaching Web literacy in primary education , 2007 .

[20]  Laura M. O’Dwyer,et al.  Special Edition: Educational Outcomes and Research from 1:1 Computing Settings , 2010 .

[21]  V. Rideout,et al.  Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds , 2010 .

[22]  Jamieson A. McKenzie.  Planning good change with technology and literacy , 2001 .

[23]  K. A. Ericsson,et al.  Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data , 1984 .

[24]  Panagiotis Takis Metaxas,et al.  "Of course it's true; I saw it on the Internet!": critical thinking in the Internet era , 2003, CACM.

[25]  Mark Warschauer,et al.  Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom , 2006 .

[26]  C. Kinzer,et al.  New Literacies , 2018, Theoretical Models and Processes of Literacy.

[27]  Julie Coiro,et al.  The New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension: Assessing and Preparing Students for the 21st Century With Common Core State Standards , 2013 .

[28]  James F. Voss,et al.  Learning From History Text: The Interaction of Knowledge and Comprehension Skill with Text Structure , 1996 .

[29]  M. Anne Britt,et al.  Trust Matters: Examining the Role of Source Evaluation in Students' Construction of Meaning Within and Across Multiple Texts , 2009 .

[30]  S McDonald,et al.  Disorientation in hypertext: the effects of three text structures on navigation performance. , 1996, Applied ergonomics.

[31]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition , 1998 .

[32]  H. Schweingruber,et al.  TAKING SCIENCE TO SCHOOL: LEARNING AND TEACHING SCIENCE IN GRADES K-8 , 2007 .

[33]  Damian Bebell,et al.  One to One Computing: A Summary of the Quantitative Results from the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative , 2010 .

[34]  Bernard P. Veldkamp,et al.  Psychometric analysis of the performance data of simulation-based assessment: A systematic review and a Bayesian network example , 2015, Comput. Educ..

[35]  Øistein Anmarkrud,et al.  Students working with multiple conflicting documents on a scientific issue: relations between epistemic cognition while reading and sourcing and argumentation in essays. , 2014, The British journal of educational psychology.

[36]  Julie Coiro,et al.  Exploring the Online Reading Comprehension Strategies Used by Sixth-Grade Skilled Readers to Search for and Locate Information on the Internet. , 2007 .

[37]  Jason A. Osborne,et al.  Results from North Carolina’s 1:1 Learning Initiative Pilot: The First Year of Implementation , 2009 .

[38]  Clayton M. Christensen,et al.  Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns , 2008 .

[39]  Arthur C. Graesser,et al.  PIAAC Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments: A Conceptual Framework. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 36. , 2009 .

[40]  M. Lipsey,et al.  Performance Trajectories and Performance Gaps as Achievement Effect-Size Benchmarks for Educational Interventions , 2008 .

[41]  David L. Silvernail,et al.  21st Century Teaching and Learning: An Assessment of Student Website Evaluation Skills. , 2008 .

[42]  Jérôme Dinet,et al.  The influence of surface and deep cues on primary and secondary school students' assessment of relevance in Web menus , 2011 .

[43]  L. Henry,et al.  SEARCHing for an Answer: The Critical Role of New Literacies While Reading on the Internet , 2006 .

[44]  Susan R. Goldman,et al.  Teaching Students to Evaluate Source Reliability during Internet Research Tasks , 2006, ICLS.

[45]  Michael B. W. Wolfe,et al.  Relations Between Adolescents' Text Processing and Reasoning , 2005 .

[46]  Gene V. Glass,et al.  Ethnic Segregation in Arizona Charter Schools , 1999 .

[47]  Matthew J. Koehler,et al.  Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge , 2006, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[48]  Steven M. Ross,et al.  When each one has one: The influences on teaching strategies and student achievement of using laptops in the classroom , 2003 .

[49]  Joseph Krajcik,et al.  Science on the Web: Students Online in a Sixth-Grade Classroom , 2000 .

[50]  J. Fraillon,et al.  Preparing for life in a digital age , 2014 .

[51]  S. Holm.  A Simple Sequentially Rejective Multiple Test Procedure , 1979 .

[52]  Anthony S. Bryk,et al.  Coherence : What It Is and Why It Should Guide School Improvement Policy , 2002 .

[53]  P. Donahue,et al.  The Nation's Report Card[TM]: Reading, 2003. NCES 2005-453. , 2005 .

[54]  Sunday Cummins,et al.  Close Reading of Informational Texts: Assessment-Driven Instruction in Grades 3-8 , 2012 .

[55]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[56]  E. Hanushek,et al.  Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement , 1998 .

[57]  R. Desjardins,et al.  OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills , 2013 .

[58]  J. Fraillon,et al.  Preparing for Life in a Digital Age: The IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study International Report , 2014 .

[59]  Timothy J. Robinson,et al.  Multilevel Analysis: Techniques and Applications , 2002 .

[60]  Sean F. Reardon.  The Widening Income Achievement Gap. , 2013 .

[61]  M. Anne Britt,et al.  Reading multiple texts about climate change: The relationship between memory for sources and text comprehension , 2010 .

[62]  Dania Bilal.  Children's use of the Yahooligans! Web search engine: I. Cognitive, physical, and affective behaviors on fact‐based search tasks , 2000 .

[63]  Kurt Squire,et al.  Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age , 2011 .

[64]  D. Leu,et al.  The New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension: Expanding the Literacy and Learning Curriculum , 2011, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.

[65]  Kelly S. Shapley,et al.  Evaluation of the Texas Technology Immersion Pilot: Outcomes for the Third Year (2006-07). , 2008 .

[66]  Charles E Matthews,et al.  The effect of social desirability and social approval on self-reports of physical activity. , 2005, American journal of epidemiology.

[67]  Danielle S. McNamara,et al.  Learning from texts: Effects of prior knowledge and text coherence , 1996 .

[68]  G. Glass,et al.  High-stakes testing and student achievement: Does accountability pressure increase student learning? , 2006 .

[69]  Linda Darling-Hammond.  Standards, Accountability, and School Reform , 2004, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[70]  Elizabeth Birr Moje,et al.  Chapter 1 Developing Socially Just Subject-Matter Instruction: A Review of the Literature on Disciplinary Literacy Teaching , 2007 .

[71]  J. Guthrie,et al.  Contributions of Student Questioning and Prior Knowledge to Construction of Knowledge from Reading Information Text , 2006 .

[72]  Gary R. Morrison,et al.  Integrating Computers into the Problem-Solving Process , 2003 .

[73]  Frank J. Chaloupka,et al.  Validating Adolescent Socioeconomic Status: Comparing School Free or Reduced Price Lunch with Community Measures , 2014 .

[74]  David C. Berliner,et al.  The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools , 1996 .

[75]  Gunther Kress,et al.  Literacy in the New Media Age , 2003 .

[76]  D. Leu,et al.  Literacy and Technology: Deictic Consequences for Literacy Education in an Information Age , 2000 .

[77]  Richard J. Coley,et al.  America's Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future. , 2015 .

[78]  Christine Greenhow,et al.  Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship in a Digital Age , 2009 .

[79]  Stephen L. Pruitt.  The Next Generation Science Standards: Where Are We Now and What Have We Learned? , 2015 .

[80]  Andrew Jones.  A review of the research literature on barriers to the uptake of ICT by teachers. , 2004 .

[81]  Jean-François Rouet,et al.  The Skills of Document Use: From Text Comprehension to Web-Based Learning , 2006 .

[82]  Gail E. Tompkins.  Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach , 1996 .

[83]  Oscar Valiente,et al.  PISA 2009 Results: Students On Line Digital Technologies and Performance (Volume VI) , 2011 .

[84]  Alexis Berry,et al.  Using Laptops to Facilitate Middle School Science Learning: The Results of Hard Fun. Research Brief. , 2009 .

[85]  S. Drew,et al.  Open Up the Ceiling on the Common Core State Standards: Preparing Students for 21st‐Century Literacy—Now , 2012 .

[86]  Mark Warschauer,et al.  Information Literacy in the Laptop Classroom , 2007, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[87]  Jay R. Campbell,et al.  The Nation's Report Card: Reading, 2002. , 2003 .

[88]  Ngss Lead States.  Next generation science standards : for states, by states , 2013 .

[89]  David Passig,et al.  The impact of collaborative online reading on summarizing skills , 2014, Education and Information Technologies.

[90]  Susan R. Goldman,et al.  Managing, Understanding, Applying, and Creating Knowledge in the Information Age: Next-Generation Challenges and Opportunities , 2013 .

[91]  D. Light,et al.  Laptop Programs for Students , 2009, Science.

[92]  Julie Coiro,et al.  Predicting Reading Comprehension on the Internet , 2011 .