Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case Study
BackgroundAsking learners manually authored questions about their readings improves their text comprehension. Yet, not all reading materials comprise sufficiently many questions and many informal reading materials do not contain any. Therefore, automatic question generation has great potential in ed...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022-06-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frai.2022.900304/full |
| _version_ | 1811257030395035648 |
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| author | Tim Steuer Anna Filighera Thomas Tregel André Miede |
| author_facet | Tim Steuer Anna Filighera Thomas Tregel André Miede |
| author_sort | Tim Steuer |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | BackgroundAsking learners manually authored questions about their readings improves their text comprehension. Yet, not all reading materials comprise sufficiently many questions and many informal reading materials do not contain any. Therefore, automatic question generation has great potential in education as it may alleviate the lack of questions. However, currently, there is insufficient evidence on whether or not those automatically generated questions are beneficial for learners' understanding in reading comprehension scenarios.ObjectivesWe investigate the positive and negative effects of automatically generated short-answer questions on learning outcomes in a reading comprehension scenario.MethodsA learner-centric, in between-groups, quasi-experimental reading comprehension case study with 48 college students is conducted. We test two hypotheses concerning positive and negative effects on learning outcomes during the text comprehension of science texts and descriptively explore how the generated questions influenced learners.ResultsThe results show a positive effect of the generated questions on the participants learning outcomes. However, we cannot entirely exclude question-induced adverse side effects on learning of non-questioned information. Interestingly, questions identified as computer-generated by learners nevertheless seemed to benefit their understanding.Take AwayAutomatic question generation positively impacts reading comprehension in the given scenario. In the reported case study, even questions recognized as computer-generated supported reading comprehension. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T17:50:05Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-8d3b99a585f0477483d0d0c451b3afde |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2624-8212 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T17:50:05Z |
| publishDate | 2022-06-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence |
| spelling | doaj.art-8d3b99a585f0477483d0d0c451b3afde2022-12-22T03:22:32ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence2624-82122022-06-01510.3389/frai.2022.900304900304Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case StudyTim Steuer0Anna Filighera1Thomas Tregel2André Miede3Multimedia Communications Lab (KOM), Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, GermanyMultimedia Communications Lab (KOM), Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, GermanyMultimedia Communications Lab (KOM), Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, GermanySaarland University of Applied Sciences, Saarbrücken, GermanyBackgroundAsking learners manually authored questions about their readings improves their text comprehension. Yet, not all reading materials comprise sufficiently many questions and many informal reading materials do not contain any. Therefore, automatic question generation has great potential in education as it may alleviate the lack of questions. However, currently, there is insufficient evidence on whether or not those automatically generated questions are beneficial for learners' understanding in reading comprehension scenarios.ObjectivesWe investigate the positive and negative effects of automatically generated short-answer questions on learning outcomes in a reading comprehension scenario.MethodsA learner-centric, in between-groups, quasi-experimental reading comprehension case study with 48 college students is conducted. We test two hypotheses concerning positive and negative effects on learning outcomes during the text comprehension of science texts and descriptively explore how the generated questions influenced learners.ResultsThe results show a positive effect of the generated questions on the participants learning outcomes. However, we cannot entirely exclude question-induced adverse side effects on learning of non-questioned information. Interestingly, questions identified as computer-generated by learners nevertheless seemed to benefit their understanding.Take AwayAutomatic question generation positively impacts reading comprehension in the given scenario. In the reported case study, even questions recognized as computer-generated supported reading comprehension.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frai.2022.900304/fullautomatic question generationself-assessmentnatural language processingreading comprehensioneducation |
| spellingShingle | Tim Steuer Anna Filighera Thomas Tregel André Miede Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case Study Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence automatic question generation self-assessment natural language processing reading comprehension education |
| title | Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case Study |
| title_full | Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case Study |
| title_fullStr | Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case Study |
| title_full_unstemmed | Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case Study |
| title_short | Educational Automatic Question Generation Improves Reading Comprehension in Non-native Speakers: A Learner-Centric Case Study |
| title_sort | educational automatic question generation improves reading comprehension in non native speakers a learner centric case study |
| topic | automatic question generation self-assessment natural language processing reading comprehension education |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frai.2022.900304/full |
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