Enabling the Collective to Assist the Individual: CoREAD, A Self-Organising Reading Environment

CoREAD, software that enables learners to collaborate indirectly while reading a text, was designed using a self-organising systems approach. Using CoREAD learners highlight portions of the text they deem important. The font colour of the text is then modified based on the collective history of learners’ actions, indicating the importance of the text sections (e.g. red for high importance). This dynamic text becomes a tool for future learners as they read the text and decide which sections are important. In this manner, the learners themselves – often an untapped resource assist each other. Results from a pilot study suggest that the software enables relatively stable patterns – “collective wisdom” about the text to emerge from the indirect collaboration of the learners. Educational Context: Problem If learners in post-secondary institutions are to become successful life-long learners, particularly in professional and learned disciplines, then they require the ability to read disciplinary texts (journal articles, research reports, literary analyses, etc.). Such texts are constantly being published and so the knowledge they collectively contain is therefore very dynamic. As such, typical textbooks can not adequately reflect, in real-time, this changing knowledge base. However, educators have good reasons for using textbooks. Textbooks are designed to cover numerous topics very quickly and in a manner that (it is hoped) will be “easier” for students to understand. One might well ask if the skills required to read textbooks so as to perform well on assessments are the same skills needed to grasp disciplinary texts? Does this prepare students to learn from and be critical of disciplinary texts, for example? (also see J. S. Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) However, disciplinary texts might prove challenging for many students who may need assistance. Feedback during learning has been shown to be more beneficial than feedback after the fact. Therefore, assistance while reading is needed. One way to do so would be to analyse each text based on expert knowledge of the domain and then provide students with hints, guiding questions, additional resources etc. Unfortunately, this is very time consuming and unlikely to be adopted when the texts from year to year (or semester to semester) are constantly changing. A flexible and adaptive system was therefore sought. The approach adopted here was to create software that enables learners to collaborate indirectly while reading a text. As learners read expository text a simple but crucial task for successful comprehension is locating the most relevant information within the text (A. L. Brown & Day, 1983; Winograd, 1984). Learners with limited prior knowledge about the subject matter being read will be at a particular disadvantage (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991), as will those who are generally less capable readers. For this reason, the software designed enables learners to populate a text with information about the most important sections that can then be used by future learners. In this case, the learners themselves – often an untapped resource assist each other. Chiarella, A. F., & Lajoie, S. P. (2006). Enabling the collective to assist the individual: CoREAD, a self-organising reading environment. In T. C. Reeves & S. F. Yamashita (Eds.), Proceedings of the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (E-Learn) (pp. 2753-2757). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.