Development of an Interactive Narrative for Adult Literacy Learners

This chapter describes development efforts that build upon the Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking-2 (iSTART-2), an intelligent tutoring system that provides self-explanation strategy instruction to improve reading comprehension. The chapter reflects on considerations of the unique needs of adult literacy learners, and outlines the specific guidelines followed to adapt the system to these learners. Several modifications have been made to adapt iSTART to adult learners, including the following: 1) two additional strategy instructional modules for summarization and deep question asking, 2) a text library with life-relevant texts for adult learners, and 3) an interactive narrative which allows instantiated practice of reading strategies using life-relevant artifacts. The authors also describe results from two attitudinal studies examining learners' perceptions of the interactive narrative.