The development and validation of an interactive hypermedia program for teaching word identification skills to students with disabilities

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the effects of a computerized instructional program, called the Word Identification Strategy CD-ROM Program (WISCD), on the reading performance of secondary students with high-incidence disabilities. The WISCD combined a number of interactive hypermedia features such as nonlinear format, audio, video, graphics, and interactive activities to provide instruction to students in the Word Identification Strategy (WIS). Additionally, the content was presented through research-based instructional methods such as modeling, scaffolded instruction, and corrective feedback. The instruction was designed to address the needs of secondary students with disabilities whose decoding performance was two to four years behind grade level.; Two studies were conducted. The first was conducted in an eighth-grade special education classroom with seven students with disabilities and utilized a multiple-baseline across-students design. Data were collected to evaluate the effectiveness of the WISCD relative to improving students' word reading ability on multiple word-reading probes and standardized measures of reading. Results indicated that the percentage of words read accurately increased with the onset of instruction and was maintained throughout instruction by all students. Substantial mean gains from pretest to posttest on the majority of standardized reading measures were also realized by the students.; The second study was conducted in a high school resource room with 16 tenth- through twelfth-grade students with disabilities. The study utilized a pretest-posttest control-group design. Half the students received WIS instruction utilizing the WISCD, and the other half received live instruction of the same strategy. Data were collected to evaluate the effectiveness of the WISCD compared to live instruction relative to improving students' word reading ability on standardized reading measures and researcher-developed word-reading tests. Results indicated that both instructional conditions significantly impacted student word reading performance on most of the measures in an equivalent way. Comprehension scores did not improve.