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Opinion | Michigan can improve reading using digital approach designed for Gen Alpha
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At Ypsilanti Community Schools, a new curriculum management system is reshaping effective education for Generation Alpha, the first cohort of children raised entirely in a screen-based world. The system, called the Roadmap Platform, drove a 9-percentile-point gain in reading growth for third and fifth grade students.
The curriculum didn’t change, but the delivery did.
Elliot Soloway is a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan. Anne Tapp Jaksa is a professor of education at Saginaw Valley State University. Cathie Norris is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of North Texas. (Courtesy photos)
With support from the University of Michigan’s Center for Digital Curricula, we repackaged the district’s commercial English Language Arts (ELA) program for digital-first learners accustomed to swiping before writing. In our Roadmaps Platform, static paper lessons transform into dynamic, colorful and interactive concept maps — called “Roadmaps” — that support the students’ ELA journeys. The digital format also allows teachers to enrich the conventional curriculum with videos, AI voice supports, simulations, and real-time collaboration.
The results were transformative. The students who used the Roadmap-formatted curriculum scored, on average, in the 48th percentile on the NWEA test, a national growth assessment. That’s a 9-point leap compared to the 39th percentile for their peers using the same lessons in a conventional print format. In education, that kind of movement isn’t just a data point — it’s a trajectory changer.
Today, school administrators and teachers are wrestling with concerns over how students’ screen time is reducing classroom engagement and testing scores. But our work with the Roadmap Platform shows that screen time and learning need not be in opposition.
Generation Alpha doesn’t just live with technology — they live through it. They respond best to learning experiences that mirror the environments they navigate outside of school. Worksheets and conventional lectures simply can’t hold students’ attention as well as the digital media in which Gen Alpha is fluent, according to teacher surveys. Research confirms that Generation Alpha overwhelmingly prefers digital reading for convenience and engagement. And although studies show that students often better recall specific details from longer texts when they read it on paper, they can understand the main idea across media.
Roadmaps succeed because they don’t ask students to adapt to outdated systems, and they don’t simply copy print content onto a digital device. They meet students where they are—and take them further. Roadmaps offer embedded support like voice recording options for teachers to narrate instructions to assignments and for students to record answers. These tools help students of all reading proficiencies independently navigate Roadmaps at their own pace. Supporting self-paced learning is critical to maintaining high student engagement, according to a 2024 student survey.
Our students are in dire need of tools that work for them, especially in low-income communities where access to support tools is too often a hurdle. Michigan in particular has some of the country’s lowest performing students —i t is ranked 44th in the nation. Yet, the state also provides the least support for its low-income students, according to a report from EdTrust-Midwest.
Michigan’s future depends on how well we educate our youngest citizens. That means building curriculum systems that don’t just digitize textbooks — but reimagine delivery for relevance, responsiveness, and results.
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