Abstract:

This study investigates how web-based eBooks with computer games affect sixth graders’ attitudes towards recreational reading. Since peer social interaction is important in middle school, we will also investigate how secure online social interaction to IMapBooks improves sixth graders attitudes towards reading.

Recreational reading is vital for students’ educational and professional success (Share, 2008). Yet a literacy crisis has hit the Western world, in which recreational reading plummets starting in 6th grade (Mol & Bus, 2008). This decline of recreational reading may be caused by consumption of computer games and other digital media, which are more reactive than books and have a culture of social interaction. One possible solution is web-based eBooks, combining narrative text and computer games (IMapBooks).

The decline in recreational reading, in middle school, coincides with a period where students increasingly build their identities on peer social interaction (Hodgson, 2006). Currently digital media support social interaction better than do traditional hardcopy books. Social interaction is a motivator for successful recreational readers (Knoestler, 2010), who discuss books they are reading, or tip other readers to read books, or get hints from other readers on what to read. Although silent reading certainly has great value (Ware, 2012), it is worth investigating whether a social frame around silent reading adds value.

Research Questions:
RQ1. How can face-to-face, and online, social interaction surrounding eBooks with embedded games affect fifth grade children’s recreational reading and attitudes about reading?
RQ3. How can the addition of online social interaction to eBooks, with embedded games, improve fifth grade school children’s attitudes about reading, a predictor for recreational reading?
RQ4: What kinds of social interactions do fifth grade school children engage in when chatting online while reading web-based eBooks with embedded computer games, and what are the functions of these interactions?

Research Design:
Participants:
Participants will be teachers and students in elementary school in 5th grade. Students will include students designated as gifted, as well as the non-gifted students with whom they are mainstreamed.

Procedure:
Students (either individually or in groups of two-four) will read stories or chapters, and play games, in web-based eBooks with embedded computer games.
Stage 1: To investigate what kind of social interaction is appropriate to add to web-based eBooks with computer games, we will investigate students small group face-to-face interactions with the following: (1) teacher observation notes, (2) student surveys (using anonymized ids) and (3) teacher-led class discussion (student focus group).
Stage 2: Students will read sections of an eBook with embedded computer games and be able to chat with each other electronically while reading the eBook and playing the games, in a synchronous (students will be reading/playing at the same time) condition, i.e., students will be at computers within the same classroom. Teachers will monitor, for appropriateness, the students’ chat conversations on a screen that shows up to four groups of chats simultaneously. Researchers will code chat conversations according to functions of the communications.

Results:
Results will be reported at the conference.

Keywords:

Reading, computer games, social interaction.