THINKING HABITATS LLC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.6

Description

The project will research and develop an online learning module to increase the capacity of ruralhigh school students to use written local news reports as a knowledge source to make informeddecisions which will enable them to lead successful lives and contribute to the wellbeing of theircommunities. Over 66% of rural senior high school students in the U.S. do not have the readingcomprehension and critical thinking strategies necessary to read and analyze informational text(NCES 2018) let alone enough knowledge and motivation to engage in decision-makingprocesses that matter to their professional personal and civic lives. The 10-hour online modulewill be a digitized version of an existing brick-and-mortar learning program that was developedby the research team taught in rural schools for over five years and has proven scientificallyeffective in increasing rural students' scores on a standardized graduation test on readingwriting mathematics and science subscales. Its four learning domains of reading comprehensionstrategies critical thinking strategies news media knowledge and civic engagement are directlyaligned with ELA and Government standards Common Core State Standards and theirrespective Career Anchors. An interactive student-centered sequence of technical and curricularfeatures (e.g. interactive videos written content group discussion reading-writing tasks andonline rural news reports) is used to engage students in acquiring the competence-based learningobjectives of the learning domains. By doing so students will not only develop the capability ofinformed decision-making in a way that matters to their young lives in rural America but alsocontribute directly to the workforce development in their local economies.The project's R&D focuses on two technical objectives that are pivotal to the feasibility of thenew digitized product. This includes developing technological and curricular features thatmaintain strong instructional effectiveness on student strategy use (i.e. reading comprehensioncritical thinking) and evaluate the overall module usability for high school teachers to achievetheir subject-area teaching goals. Objective 1: Technical feasibility of interactive videos willdevelop and test the instructional videos' effectiveness using think-alouds with a small studentsample (n = 12) in a learning lab setting; videos will then be embedded in the module and theirfeasibility in authentic classroom settings determined through the module's pre/post-tests andformative assessments. Objective 2: Technical feasibility of the module for teachers will evaluatethe technical feasibility of the model including the navigation and use of the technical andcurricular features using focus-group interviews teaching journals and video observations. Themajority of the research will be completed in a rural high school with expert teachers (n = 4) whowill implement the module in Government and ELA courses (n = 12). The module will berevised in three iterations and provide a firm foundation for Phase II R&D. The final product willbe a scientifically-proven effective tool to develop and assess the capacity of informed decisionmaking in a new emerging workforce and boost ruralsocio-economic development.Market research demonstrates a competitive need of rural high school for an effective program toimprove student performance in reading comprehension and on graduation/ college admissiontests. The product will be rolled out in the form of annual student licenses targeting a TotalAddressable Market of est. 2.9 million rural students 33% of the US high school population(NCES 2018). Regional and national stakeholders endorse the product for its economic civicand educational solution providing $250000.00 in matching funds and investor capital.