Free Webinar on: Improving Comprehension Strategies of Struggling Adult Readers Through Conversational Trialogues With AutoTutor

Hi everyone,

Information about the free webinar is found in the third paragraph. First, I wanted to give some introductions...

For those of you not familiar with the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy, I encourage you to browse through our website (csal.gsu.edu) where you will find the following items of possible interest: information about how to determine readability (http://csal.gsu.edu/content/readability) in a way that is more accurate than the Flesch-Kincaid found in Word, a repository of web-based texts for adults who read between the 3rd and 8th grade levels (http://csal.gsu.edu/content/library), examples of demographic, reading practices, and computer familiarity questions that you may want to ask adult literacy students ( at the bottom of http://csal.gsu.edu/content/phase-1-assessment), and general adult literacy resources found on the Web (http://csal.gsu.edu/content/resources).

I would like to highlight one specific aspect of our Center. The University of Memphis created AutoTutor, an intelligent tutoring system on the web that delivers comprehension instruction for adults reading at the 3rd-8th grade levels. The system includes adaptive conversational trialogues with two animated conversational agents (teacher and student) that interact with the adult learner in each AutoTutor lesson. The curriculum has lessons with trialogues that cover specific comprehension strategies.  The system collects student performance on each item within each lesson for use by the students' teachers. For a 5 minute YouTube video on AutoTutor, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNyIdlrcGzY&feature=youtu.be

Would you like to learn more about AutoTutor? I encourage you to enroll in one of the following free webinars, where Art Graesser from the University of Memphis will be discussing: Improving Comprehension Strategies of Struggling Adult Readers Through Conversational Trialogues with AutoTutor. This webinar will take place on:

Wednesday, February 20, 1:00 PM-2:00 PM EDT / 10:00 AM-11:00 AM PDT. To register go to: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_w5muTvagSUqe15BPVyvT2A

as well as on

Thursday, February 21, 1:00 PM-2:00 PM EDT / 10:00 AM-11:00 AM PDT. To register go to: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__0Q9US4aSL6z1Q5L4RhuUQ

(note: both webinars will include the same information)

Questions? Feel free to contact me!

Daphne Greenberg, Georgia State University: dgreenberg@gsu.edu

 

Comments

Daphne, thanks for sharing such valuable links to resources dedication to adult learners! I believe that all of the great support resources on CSAL are free, which is great!

I was very interested in the promising readability tool you mentioned. I followed the link to  Coh-Metrix, the tool described and found options for a free trial, but on entering text, I got an error message. Might it be because I'm on a Mac? I visited the AutoTutor site as well to find out if there was a cost involved. Apparently, the system is matched to Windows PCs, but maybe not.

I look forward to participating in the Webinar and finding out more. Thanks again. I hope others join us as well! Leecy

Hi Leecy,

I just tried to access Coh-Metrix from a Mac using the link in Daphne's post, http://cohmetrix.com/, and then choosing the "web Tool" button. It worked fine. When you get the results table, scroll down to the bottom to get the readability level.

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology group

 

 

Hi Leecy,

I see that David replied to you, and yes he is correct-it works just fine using a Mac. To answer your question about AutoTutor, it can be accessed on a Mac, PC and Chrome Book. I am not sure what type of problem you are having when you try, so please email me at: dgreenberg@gsu.edu and perhaps I can help you.

Daphne