Comparing Paper Reading Diaries to Pageticker - Pilot Study Results

Jun 3

3 min read

Overview

We’ve been working closely with three pilot schools since January who have been providing us with valuable early-stage feedback.

During this early phase, the one question we really wanted to answer was, is Pageticker really getting children to read more? Well, four months in and we think we have some evidence.

Paper Reading Diaries - Methodology

The method was simple: we asked our pilot schools to provide the paper reading diaries they’d used from September to January with their students prior to introducing Pageticker, and we went through them counting entries. Then we pulled the same information for February to May for those students from our database to analyse their Pageticker usage.

The paper diaries looked well used, and parents had been enthusiastically using them at the start of the school year. There were plenty of entries (although not much in the way of comments.) For any EYFS or KS1 teacher, this will be familiar.

Here’s a typical double page from one diary. Whilst at a glance it looks full and well used, it highlights how paper reading diaries can actually mask a problem. Looking more carefully at the dates, these 12 entries actually cover over two months of reading. When wading through a pile of 30 reading diaries, even the most diligent of teachers might fail to spot that this child had not read for some pretty long periods of time.

a used paper reading log diary — Paper reading diaries can look busy and full, but unless you look at the dates carefully, it can mask a problem

Paper Reading Diaries - Results

With paper reading diaries we found that on average, there were 11.2 logs made per student per month from September to January.

Pageticker - Methodology

How did Pageticker compare? Looking at the on-line teacher dashboard, we were concerned we might even see a drop - there were clearly long spells highlighted where children hadn’t read. But this was previously the case with paper diaries; the way we presented the data on the teacher dashboard just made these periods more visible.

pageticker user dashboard showing weekly reading logs — It's easier to identify long gaps in a child's reading history with Pageticker's whole class weekly view

Pageticker - Results

As it was, when we dug into the database, we were delighted to find that on average, there were 19.9 logs made per student per month from February to May using the app.

Comparison

This graph illustrates clearly the uptake:

a graph illustrating the average number of reading logs per child when pageticker was introduced — Paper reading diaries were replaced with Pageticker on 3rd February in our pilot schools

The huge leap we saw in February and March was not replicated in April (Easter holidays), but even that month - the worst performing with Pageticker - saw more logs recorded than the best month with paper reading diaries.

Sixteen of the students in the sample of 18 saw a significant increase in logging reading, with the other two showing very small drops (one from 9.0 to 8.8 logs per month, and the other from 19.6 to 19.3 logs per month).

	Paper reading diaries	Pageticker
Logs per child per month	11.2	19.9

In short, parents logged reading 78% more with Pageticker.

Other Observations

It wasn’t just the number of reading logs that had improved. The logs also contained a wealth of additional information that the paper diaries never recorded

Page numbers and multiple reads were recorded for every record.
Fluency metrics were associated with 19% of logs (where the parent had scored for accuracy, reading rate, expression and comprehension)
Almost 50% had a star rating attached
11% had recorded a difficult word
40% had a comment
A ‘book review’ feature was introduced in March, and this feature had already been used by 56% of the families using the app.

Conclusions

Why the improvement? Now we’re into the guesswork, but we’re hypothesising around the following:

Push notifications to parent’s phones when books are assigned by a teacher, or when a parent hasn’t logged for a few days, have been very successful at keeping reading on the agenda for busy families
Habit forming tendencies. Just as not reading becomes a habit, reading regularly becomes a habit
In-app rewards. Whilst these gamification features are still very-much in their infancy, they’re proven to drive engagement in other products, and it's reasonable to think they’ve helped here.

So we’re doubling down on these areas. We know that reading engagement is the best indicator of academic success (even more than socio-economic class - OECD Study 2002), and a multitude of academic studies have linked it to dozens of other things too: raised self-esteem, better sleep, improved ability to express emotions, even longevity. Because ultimately, saving teachers and parents time is a nice-to-have, but boosting reading engagement in young people is essential.

If your school is using Pageticker, or thinking of using Pageticker, we'd very happily work with you to provide impact evidence on its implementation - just drop us a line at support@pageticker.com