Adaptive AI to engage students in reading? Dr. Ron Yaros says it is possible. His fascinating study had articles from the New York Times chunked and placed in more social-media like ways and found that while people read the New York Times format for longer than the chunked version, the easier-to-scan format resulted in higher achievement for the students reading them.
This is done with adaptive AI. It is taking the words and adapting them to an easier-to-navigate structure, in this case. I’ve included some prompts in the show notes that can help you adapt text, but it seems to me that groups targeting students might just want an adaptive button on their own site as there are issues with us doing it for them.
In short: Student engagement strategies include changing the structure of how we present text according to Dr. Ron Yaros. Dr. Yaros says when the same story is broken into short chunks students can choose from, they learn more, even as they spend less time on it. He also has student engagement strategies including DIET and SPICE which help teachers make lessons that improve student engagement.
Dr. Yaros has studied how the structure of a page affects attention since 2006. Here’s what he told teachers whose students won’t read.
The Smart Story Suite isn’t available to teachers yet. In a part of our conversation that didn’t make the episode, Dr. Yaros explained how to build the same structure yourself:
While this is not his Smart Story Suite, however, AI can be used to follow some of the concepts of what he is teaching in this show: making text in chunks and more readable. So, here are two prompts and a link to a website to help you chunk a text with AI. Check the article’s terms before you paste it into an AI tool, and read what comes back against the original. Dr. Yaros’s point is that structure, not new words, does the work.
Prompt 1: Break a text into sections (adapted from AI for Education’s Modify the Usability of an Existing Text prompt; their version also changes the reading level, so this one tells the AI not to)
Prompt 2: Build a Smart Story layout (3 bullets, an introduction, then clickable sections, the layout Dr. Yaros describes)
Here’s where the facts in this episode come from, with the time stamp so you can hear each one. Checked November 9, 2026.
This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Vicki Davis (00:00): Will your students watch three hours of Netflix but won’t read one page you assign? Today we’re talking about how to keep students engaged when you feel like they don’t want to read and how adaptive AI might help us in this area. This is Tech Tool Tuesday, episode 1027.
Announcer (00:19): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:24): Your students will watch three hours of Netflix and won’t read one page. Everybody has decided that’s the problem with kids.
Our guest today has spent 20 years running experiments that say it might actually be a problem with the page.
Dr. Ron Yaros is an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism and director of the Digital Engagement Lab. His new book is The Digital Engagement Model: How to Capture and Keep Audience Attention.
Why is it so hard to keep students’ attention today?
Vicki Davis (00:59): Ron, what an important topic. Keeping audience attention wherever we are.
Why is that such a struggle?
Dr. Ron Yaros (01:07): When you have so much technology and so much information bombarding us, I think what the students are starting to believe, of course, is that there’s really cool information on TikTok and Instagram. But when I get it in the classroom, it’s not quite as colorful, it’s not quite as organized in terms of giving us short videos and trying to elaborate on the very important topics.
And so it’s how the content is being presented. And that’s how our model has evolved to test which structures of information are most successful in keeping the students’ attention.
We call it attention momentum. We can always get their attention for a few seconds and the challenge is keeping it.
Vicki Davis (01:51): And the algorithms, some people say the algorithms have ruined the kids. A 45-second to a 60-second attention span is probably not gonna let you learn molecular biology.
Dr. Ron Yaros (02:04): Yes. It gets us back to the fact that we have these very interesting short videos that they’re used to.
And if we can begin to adapt our content to them based on what we call their digital diet, our research has shown that it builds more interest, it builds more personalization, and there’s interactivity involved. I think a real important thing for me to clarify up front is.
The two types of interest. There’s individual interest.
So if a student is taking it and that student is a major in my college and they really want to learn this stuff, that doesn’t take too many bells and whistles to get their attention and keep it because they’re really interested in it. They have an investment.
Situational interest, is generated only by the environment. So I have, today, 70 students virtually from all different majors across campus.
It’s a gen ed course. I said to myself, I need to generate situational interest because these students, many of them are just taking it to get the credit, of course.
I just want to make that differentiation because it’s the situational interest that we think will really help to communicate more information to those students who need to know this stuff but may not necessarily want to.
Does changing the structure of a text help students learn more?
Vicki Davis (03:18): Your 2006 research took two New York Times science stories and changed only the structure? Talk about that research and what it means for attention and comprehension.
Dr. Ron Yaros (03:30): Yes, first of all, thanks for pointing out. I’ve been doing this for several years, and it started with the 2006 study where we had two sets of college students coming into our lab we did test more than 100, and we exposed them to either the New York Times story on a complex topic, nanotechnology, or a new story on breast cancer.
And then we structured it in a different way that gave them more interactivity, more choices, more chunks as opposed to a full page of text. And we found that they not only learned more, but they really paid more attention.
It was a self-report of this is much more interesting. That’s what really made the statistically significant difference that jumpstarted my whole research program for the subsequent years.
What is the difference between adaptive AI and generative AI?
Vicki Davis (04:19): You’re talking adaptive AI, not generative AI. Would you help us understand what adaptive AI is and how it fits with that research you did back in 2006?
Dr. Ron Yaros (04:29): So I have a team of very sharp undergraduate students who really want to also improve education. But I asked them, what can we do with AI and what could it do to make it more of a positive experience for you?
So it doesn’t generate those hallucinations. They came up with this tool called the Smart Story Suite.
Which means that you put in any information that it’s the original information that’s produced by the author, and it will restructure that, not changing the information at all, not generating any new content, nor does it just summarize that content with a bunch of bullet points. It really does give the students all of that information, but it structures it in chunks.
So as opposed to a full page of text. The student might see five, 10, 15 buttons on the left-hand side where the adaptive AI tool that does not generate anything new really just restructured the content.
So students can pick and choose what they want. In essence, they’re actually composing their own narrative based on what they’re interested in.
We found statistically significant differences. In fact, It’s interesting because when we did it in a test mode where people were also either exposed to the Smart Story Suite or the New York Times, the students spent more time on the New York Times article, the linear page of text.
They learned more from the Smart Story Suite, even though they spent less time on it, which really began to get us scratching our heads, because that goes against, analytics.
Can adaptive AI re-level text for different reading levels?
Vicki Davis (06:03): Yeah, because we equate time with, they’re digging in deeper, but maybe it’s just harder to understand. Teachers, there have been text Rewordify and all kinds of tools that have been out there and teachers, largely in K-12 have been responsible for re-leveling text is what we call it.
The reading tool that Microsoft has where it will sort of re-level. But this whole adaptive AI approach could really help us one thing that teachers tell us is that I’ve got kids reading on a second grade level and a 12th grade level in my same middle school class.
How am I going to reach them all? So does adaptive AI even level up and down that way or adapt in other ways?
Dr. Ron Yaros (06:46): It only adapts the structure into chunks. If I were to really
Vicki Davis (06:50): Okay.
Dr. Ron Yaros (06:50): Describe the screen, it does give you three bullet points of the main gist of that content. And then it gives you an introductory paragraph.
So that could be short form comprehension for students who have
Vicki Davis (07:03): Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ron Yaros (07:04): Limited time. We don’t do a one size fits all.
We know that students, not all students are going to read a full page of text. So we give them that small amount that a summative AI would do.
Then we generate those buttons on the left hand side so it can be long form. So it’s just it’s up to the interest and the time of that student.
It does not simplify the text. I know what you’re you’re getting at.
I wish it could.
What is the digital DIET in student engagement?
Vicki Davis (07:28): But this whole idea of adaptive AI is what really intrigued me there’s another area that you talk a lot about. You talk about the digital diet and you say that everybody designs for demographics and interest.
And almost nobody designs for environment and time. What do you mean by that?
Dr. Ron Yaros (07:47): We did a field study where 80 students said, Okay, I’ll sign up and when I get a text message from you, I’ll tell you exactly what I’m doing at that moment. And we collected 518 field reports.
And from that data, we saw there are many different times where students will check their phone throughout the day. It averages about 115 times per day.
And so
Vicki Davis (08:11): Wow.
Dr. Ron Yaros (08:12): We are looking for ways to communicate meaningful information for our class and found out that it needs to adapt to the environment, which is the E in DIET, and the time they have to engage. I mean, realistically, and even you and I can admit this, we might be interested in something, but a meeting is about to start, the class is about to start, and we can’t really consume all of it.
So again, we’re back to the structure of the content. It doesn’t have to be just long form.
Or short form video, it’s a structure from AI that will give us the options for both. And that is what the environment and time told us when we were tracking students.
What kicks students out of reading a text?
Vicki Davis (08:51): So your earlier model used the phrase cognitive kick outs. What kicks a student out of text?
Dr. Ron Yaros (09:00): It’s a full page of text. That’s why in our industry, journalism is suffering from teens who are not only avoiding news, but when they do, it’s usually five seconds at the most.
We’re back to the structure of the content. And what AI does also is it brings in all of the visuals because students are extremely visual.
Today, in fact, I just took a survey of my students, the 70, and I asked them. Why is news not as cool as TikTok?
Because I wanted to know the exact specific things they were really looking at. And it was color and it was movement, and it was short text.
They didn’t talk about it exclusively as a video mode. There are many other things in that content that can make it much more situationally interesting.
I know all of us teachers, we do a lot of visualization in our slides. Many times we do the bullet points But it’s important to keep this in mind throughout the entire duration of the class meeting.
When it comes to videos, I do not produce any more than a five-minute video, but I’ll produce five of them. And I’ll tell students you pick and choose which videos you want to watch.
I don’t care what order, and if you want to come back later, that’s fine. But I found that a 30- to 60-minute video, obviously students are skipping through it, and many of them just don’t even watch it based on our analytics.
Do students need more reading stamina or shorter texts?
Vicki Davis (10:17): The tough thing about this is that there are many who are saying, Okay, the kids have gotten lazy. They need to learn some reading stamina, right?
I have to wonder if there’s not a happy medium. We do want them to comprehend a complex a 100-page report on the state of cancer research, right?
If they’re a cancer researcher, but then we’re also trying to, get them engaged in our topic. So where’s the balance there?
Dr. Ron Yaros (10:42): Well, I think the balance is an adaptive AI tool that offers them the option and it does not stop them from pursuing additional information. We have to really try to break things down into chunks.
And arguably as a science reporter, I can say that we know that people understand complexity like cancer if it’s broken down into chunks.
How can teachers use SPICE to plan a lesson?
Vicki Davis (11:05): Okay, you have another acronym, SPICE, scannability, personalization, interactivity, curiosity, and emotion. How do you pull that into teaching?
Dr. Ron Yaros (11:16): So scannability, obviously that’s the main behavior of students. So we all do bullet points on some of the slides.
Personalization, what I do there is once there is an assignment that’s completed, I give them the option to submit a short video to tell me what is it that you did or what do you think that a person could learn from what you did. In this case, it’s a virtual class, and so as opposed to just me on Zoom.
I will play some of the videos from students and ask them to elaborate. And I’m trying to personalize this large course into some selected videos.
And then interactivity, SPICE. There are a couple of products out there, there’s Nearpod and there’s Mentimeter, and I use Mentimeter where the students are looking at me on their Zoom, but they’re responding to at least, I would say, 10 different types of interactive questions.
And polls that I’m asking and responding on their phones. So obviously what I’m trying to do is keep their phones focused on my teaching and not their phones on TikTok or Instagram.
So that’s interactivity. Curiosity means once we get to your curiosity, how do we keep it?
And so there needs to be some cues in your content. Maybe it will be another question that you’re going to ask in the middle of that lecture.
But to always continue that curiosity as opposed to saying, okay, I did one poll, now I’m gonna move on and talk for five minutes about the content. The last one, which I believe is the most important, based on my observations, a lot of teachers miss the opportunity to capitalize on emotion.
So whether it is compelling visuals, whether it is an emotional, a crying person, related to in my case, a news story, I try to capitalize an emotion when I can. It’s not always easy, but it definitely is powerful.
How do I keep students’ attention after a great hook?
Vicki Davis (13:06): I’ve had great hooks and then you can lose them, just like that. How do we build that attention momentum?
Dr. Ron Yaros (13:11): So before I produce my content for my next class, I will look at the content first. Obviously we have learning objectives and outcomes.
And then I began to say, where can I apply the SPICE variables? Can I apply one, two, three?
Where can I do it? I actually organize the structure of the entire presentation based on the SPICE variables.
I find that that does at least keep their attention. We define attention momentum is not just paying attention, but being able to recall information.
And to get you back to that other test that I did, we ran three experiments, each with 1,900 people nationwide of all ages, not just students. And again, on the Smart Story Suite, even though they spent less time on it, they scored much higher on a 10 question quiz than those exposed to the one page of text.
So we’re thinking if you just make it very easy for them and they can pick and choose what they want to learn at that moment, you’re going to get better learning. The role of the teachers is say, hey, the important thing you should have learned here is this.
Did you click that button? Did you learn this?
This is what’s going to be on the next quiz or test. But they at least started as a self-learner in order to pick and choose what was of interest to them.
What can a teacher try before Friday to improve student engagement?
Vicki Davis (14:28): Ron, is there anything that you would suggest that a teacher could try before Friday?
Dr. Ron Yaros (14:35): First of all, I would think about the SPICE variables and look at your current lesson plan and see what if any of those you could incorporate to see if you get a little bit more interest from your students and a little bit better recall of information. That’s the starting point because it really is about the structure of the content.
And I’m not saying we ought to teach like social media. I’m saying we ought to use it as a template to start where we can bring them in and then hold them longer with the chunks and the buttons on the side of the screen.
So look at the SPICE variables.
Vicki Davis (15:09): So we’ve been talking with Dr. Ron Yaros, the Digital Engagement Lab.
His book is The Digital Engagement Model. Thanks for coming on the show.
Dr. Ron Yaros (15:19): Thank you so much. It’s been great.
Announcer (15:21): Thank you for tuning in to 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.
Ronald A. Yaros, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Digital Engagement at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and Director of the Digital Engagement Lab. He is the author of The Digital Engagement Model: How to Capture and Keep Audience Attention (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). His research explores how people engage with digital information and how AI, information design, and personalization can improve attention, comprehension, and credibility. He earned his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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