Practice of skills for reading comprehension in large classrooms by using a mobile collaborative support and microblogging

Abstract

Reading comprehension is essential for students, because it is a predictor of their academic or professional success, however, it is challenging for many students, even more if they are part of large classrooms. This paper presents a work which uses Design-Based Research with the purpose of combining theories, methods and techniques of the educational sciences to design a collaborative learning activity including peer evaluation to develop the skills of reading comprehension, oral and written communication. It also presents an application for iPads supporting teacher and students performing this activity. The most relevant contributions of the proposed design are two: (1) teachers can in real time automatically configure the members of the work teams using 3 different criteria: random, individual performance hitherto achieved by the student achieved in previous stages of the same activity, or the learning styles of each student prefers; and (2) the prior calibration of an evaluation rubric in order to ensure the quality of the application of the peer evaluation method in order to grade the answers students produce to an individual reading comprehension test. In addition, other methods and techniques are incorporated, such as: monitoring students’ performance in real time; active learning based on peer instruction to support the strategy of reading comprehension implemented.