Can the Use of Digital Platforms Develop Fluency Skills in Reading?

Moving towards the digital age, students are expected to become proficient readers through the use of technology. Learning through digital platforms requires students to fluently read text online. Students need to be able to access information and synthesize it accurately for understanding. Digital platforms can support students ability to become fluent readers and increase their comprehension.

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Reading with Technology

Education has evolved immensely with the implementation of 21st century skills and technology. My first inclination was to explore how students can set their own learning goals in elementary school,  increase their comprehension, and achieve their goals. The focus was on the effects of goal-setting and tracking on reading comprehension when using 21st century skills and technology.

In the first round of my research, I identified a possible problem that needed to be solved. I wanted to see if setting reading goals on a digital platform could help increase reading comprehension. The idea was that goal setting on a digital platform could possibly correlate with increasing comprehension in reading.  Therefore, creating reading goals on a digital platform could help increase the chances of students obtaining a higher reading comprehension. My findings were that regardless the medium of goal setting, whether on a digital platform or on paper, the results were the same. Students creating goals for themselves always  helped increase their comprehension compared to students that did not set any reading goals. These findings helped guide me towards adjusting my original driving question into a new question, but still maintaining the same goal to increase reading comprehension.

Shift In Focus
In the second round of research, I modified my driving question to closely look at the impact of how reading through digital platforms can help support reading comprehension and fluency. Students are spending a lot more time reading online in various formats, how can we ensure that students are able to clarify, comprehend text, and understand what they are reading? In addition, my school just adopted a new reading program called Benchmarks, which is in the second year of adoption for the district. This new reading program has the digital platform components of texts, and I was able to use it in the class to support the needs of the students.
Click on the video above to watch my Capstone journey.