partners (PIRLS, 2016). However, it is necessary to implement complementary strategies to classroom work in order to

reinforce reading comprehension and increase the level achieved by pupils. In a social and educational context such as

the current one, where ICT strategies are undeniably gaining prominence and emerging as an appropriate option for

increasing performance and motivation, it is worth considering reinforcing those skills that are most lacking in our

educational system by using quality technological resources. The aim of this study was to test the improvement of

serious game Leobien. The intervention was carried out during 50 sessions with a sample of 153 primary school students.

To measure the impact of the intervention, an initial and final assessment of the acquisition of reading comprehension

was carried out, provided by the programme itself, as well as the recording of academic grades. The results show an

increase in the sub-subject of reading comprehension assessed through the platform, as well as an improvement in

he 21st century educational landscape is marked by

the knowledge society and the emergence of new

needs, both inside and outside the classroom. The

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

(hereafter OECD) states that students need to be able to

in the various areas in which a person develops.

In the knowledge society, Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT) have brought about a change in the

way information is transmitted and received, which implies

a new shift in the skills required of learners. The migration

from print to screen reading involves the implementation

of new and additional reading comprehension strategies

OECD, which since 2009, has been conducting the

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

considers the future possibility of using complex or higher-

level reading comprehension tasks as the sole source for

measuring effectiveness but does not recommend this

option at this stage.

In this context of digital immersion, the integration of

digital resources into the teaching-learning process from

the first years of schooling should be valued (Bolaño-

García, 2017; Torres-Ortiz & Duarte, 2016). On the other

hand, educational software favours participation,

multimodality, adaptation, and personalisation of learning

processes through the application of a serious game

(Leobien) to improve reading comprehension, taking the

interactive reading model as a theoretical reference

framework, as well as current legislation on key

competences and the Primary Education curriculum.

This study follows a structure in which, firstly, the

theoretical framework and justification of the proposal are

presented, linking the need to improve reading

possibilities of ICT as a methodological strategy. Once the

most important conclusions of the study are presented.

Finally, the limitations and future lines of research are

established.

eading comprehension is not a static concept but

has undergone progressive transformations from

being understood as a mechanical process to one

of greater complexity. From a new conception, reading

variables (Cadavid-Ruiz et al., 2016). Reading, as the

decoding of linguistic signs, on its own does not provide

this complex comprehension, and the reader must create

links between the text and the surrounding reality. To

achieve this goal, according to Yépez et al. (2019), the

reader must take ownership of the text and to do so, must

put into practise the different levels of reading: literal,

inferential, and critical. This involves developing strategies

that allow them to relate, establish, and use the information

conveyed by the text for the elaboration of their own

improvement in reading comprehension but also in

academic performance through an indirect intervention.

Academic performance in the school context is conditioned

by multiple variables, including those that have to do with

the person him/herself, his/her abilities, and skills (Caso-

Niebla & Hernández- Guzmán, 2007). Focusing on the

object of this research, it is necessary to highlight the

performance. Language proficiency largely determines

school results, as it plays an important role in the learning

comprehension entails and, considering the context of

technological innovation in which students move, it is

necessary to propose alternative teaching methodologies

that are in line with both this new concept and the digital

era in which they are immersed. Furthermore, before

formulating a proposal, it is necessary to establish a

detection of needs based on international assessments that

evaluate reading comprehension.

On the one hand, in the Progress in International Reading

participating OECD countries, which is 540 points. Despite

the improvement compared to previous cycles, the results

of Spanish students are still below the average of the

participating countries. Moreover, the results obtained by

Spanish students in the PISA tests (OECD, 2020) are less

encouraging, with an average score of 477 points,

significantly lower than the OECD average (487) and the

European Union total (489).

texts, offering a well-founded response that manages to

review of the digital resources aimed at improving reading

comprehension in order to subsequently present the final

ICTs are currently an auxiliary tool in all areas of our lives

(Salgarayeva et al., 2021), and when they are used in the

educational context, it is not only a matter of incorporating

them in an instrumental way, but it is necessary to give

them an educational use, also favouring autonomous and

Research by Vidal-Abarca et al. (2014) used an intelligent

literacy game is GraphoGame, developed by researchers at

the University of Jyväskylä in Finland (Lyytinen et al.,

2009). It has been used in the Finnish education system for

more than a decade, has been implemented in more than 20

countries, and is one of the few serious games that has an

emerging evidence base exploring its effectiveness

(McTigue et al., 2020). This game is aimed at primary

school children and allows them to work on phoneme

awareness, as well as decoding letters, sounds, and early

words (Thomson et al., 2020). GraphoGame has the

This small sample of serious games shows that we are still

facing an unexplored line of research as not all of them

games developed specifically for reading comprehension

that consider a theoretical and legislative framework when

they are designed and developed.

changes in the user in the Horizon 2019 report (Instituto

Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y Formación del

Profesorado, 2019), which is in charge of listing the most

influential educational trends of the moment (Martín del

Pozo et al., 2017).

reading speed at all levels of primary education. The

developers of Leobien are Supertics S.L. and it is marketed

by the publishing house Edebé S.L. The publishing house

establishes agreements with the Education Departments of

the different autonomous communities of Spain for its

suitable for use on all types of computer media (computer,

it includes the components of the competence in linguistic

trained through explanatory, narrative, conversational,

descriptive, predictive, instructive and rhetorical texts; in

2nd and 3rd Primary Education, argumentative texts are

added; in 4th, 5th, and 6th primary education, pragmatic

skills are added (sayings, indirect requests, ambiguous

statements, lies, absurdities, irony, fantasy, and

after the validation process in which information was

gathered from teachers and students from a wide sample of

educational centres.

equality, etc.). The level of difficulty is adjusted according

Students work with Leobien through daily sessions of 10-

proposed in which the main ideas of texts must be

training oral and reading comprehension in all of them

through explanatory, narrative, conversational, descriptive,

predictive, instructive, and rhetorical texts. In the 4th, 5th,

and 6th grades of primary, argumentative and rhetorical

texts are also included.

divided by total exercises) and Performance (exercises

done by the students divided by the number of exercises

done by the average number of students in the same

course). In this way, the teacher can always know the

final quantitative assessment of reading comprehension

follows the line of those proposed by Alonso-Fernández et

al. (2019) and allows us to test predictive models of

knowledge. It also follows the adaptive assessment model

found in the PISA and PIRLS assessments.

Leobien shows high stability in the results when a

measurement is repeated under identical conditions.

The programme was applied in an integrated manner in the

approximately 15-minute duration, with one session per

day during the five school days of the week.

This research follows a multi-group quasi-experimental

design with a pre- test/post-test analysis of within-group

normality criterion was not met in their distribution.

Subsequent analyses, therefore employed non-parametric

tests. For the pretest-posttest analysis, the Wilcoxon

calculated using Hedges' g which shows the intensity of the

difference. For the interpretation of the effect size, the

conventions established by Cohen (1992) are considered,

which define the following cut-off points: values < 0.10: no

effect; 0.10 to 0.30: small effect; 0.31 to 0.50: moderate