The Influence of Personalization of Online Texts on Elementary School Students' Reading Comprehension and Attitudes toward Reading

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine the role of personalized and non-personalized online texts on elementary school fifth grade students' comprehension and their attitudes toward reading. Participants were 47 fifth-grade students from a rural elementary school in north Florida. The subjects were randomly assigned into two (personalized online text and non-personalized online text) groups. Prior to reading online texts, each students completed personal interest inventory for use in personalizing the online texts. Reading comprehension scores were measured by using multiple choice questions and an attitude survey was administrated to measure subjects‘ motivation, enjoyment and interestingness. Although the mean score of the personalized text group was slightly higher than non-personalized text group and in contrast to patterns found within research on online reading environments, independent t-test showed that the differences in the comprehension scores between two groups were not significant. According to attitude survey results personalized text group showed higher motivation, interestingness and enjoyment than the other group