Understanding the New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension
“Understanding the New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension” is a curated collection of resources to support educators’ professional learning about online reading comprehension skills and strategies–both how to assess and how to teach these skills and strategies. Researchers at the University of Connecticut created this collection to complement the Online Reading Comprehension Assessment (ORCA) Project, which was funded by the Institute for Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education.
The website contains a helpful collection of resources that provide an introduction to the ORCA Project approach to assessing online reading comprehension. There is an overview and orientation to the ORCA tasks, which assess how students locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information they read on the Internet. The “Show Me” section of the website includes videos of seventh-grade students completing the tasks, as well as supporting text that highlights important aspects of how each student completes the task. The “Let Me Try” section includes videos that teachers can practice evaluating. Teachers might be especially interested in the “In My Class” section with lesson plans for teaching these online reading skills. There are also a list of additional readings to learn more about online reading comprehension instruction and assessment.