SBIR Phase I: Computer-based co-reading for students with reading disabilities

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to provide an out-of-school reading tool to complement and reinforce the in-school work of special education teachers. In the US, over 3.6 million students are assessed with reading difficulties, but school districts face challenges in providing appropriate services, specifically due to teacher shortages and budgetary constraints. Additionally, the number of students receiving special education every year is increasing. This research seeks to benefit school districts by enabling current teachers to become more effective in several ways: students will practice reading independently and receive appropriate feedback from the technology, the lesson plans will be customized by the teacher for the individual needs of the student, teachers will have additional time to concentrate on teaching new concepts or providing individualized attention to resolve specific problems, and teachers will have digital data on student progress tracking. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) seeks to produce a prototype that students can use at home to improve their oral reading. This prototype will use a cloud-based infrastructure and end-user application to perform computer-based co-reading with the student. The technology solution will: (1) validate the student’s reading accuracy and offer remediation when the student makes a mistake, (2) allow the students’ reading teacher to customize the reading experience and the remediation, and to monitor the student’s progress, (3) use engaging book content, (4) capture and analyze data including how the students’ eyes track as they read and this data will be displayed for the teacher, (5) capture audio of students’ oral reading, and (6) provide to the teacher with the captured audio, the corresponding text using automated speech recognition, and the students’ mistakes. This prototype will undergo efficacy testing and customer discovery, receiving feedback from Directors of special education and specialized reading teachers, in order to confirm the acceptable integration with current teaching practices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.