Examining the impact of ABRACADABRA (ABRA), a game-based online literacy program, on primary school students in rural Hunan, China

This study investigated the effectiveness of ABRACADABRA (ABRA), a web-based literacy program, developed by the Center for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University, in facilitating the literacy attainment of third-grade primary school students in an area of rural China. Researchers shared the experiences of localizing ABRA to make it more readily accepted by the regional teachers. Ten schools (five experimental, five control) with 339 students participated in a one-year-long matched control study; participants in both groups took pre- and post-intervention tests. The treatment group outperformed the controls on all six key reading outcomes: Phonological Awareness (ES = +0.64), Phonemic Awareness (ES = +0. 57), Early Literacy Skills (ES = +0.70), Initial Letter Sound Fluency (ES = +0.38), Segmenting (ES = +0.81), and Non-word Reading (ES = +0.92). These outcomes suggest ABRA is effective in a context where English is used as a foreign language, and the learning resources are limited. ABRA is useful in facilitating the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into the course syllabus.