Of obvious importance in developing educational materials is the readability level. Unfortunately, not enough attention is paid to this measure.
In fact, it is possible to write materials at a relatively low readability level and still convey advanced content. Doing so makes the content more accessible to a wide variety of audiences, including those for whom the language being written in is not a first language. And as with other features of universal design, what is good for special audiences is often good for all audiences. We had an interesting discussion about this at M Brooke Robertshaw’s session at the Open Ed conference last week.
At this session, I learned about the tool Readability Studio. I just got a copy, and it was the best $70 I’ve spent in a while.
Like many others, I’ve used the Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level scale, in part because it is built into Word and other tools. From my textbook publishing days, I know that other scales like Dale-Chall are commonly used for elementary reading level texts. In reading up on this a bit, apparently Flesh-Kincaid is really intended for technical manuals, not for educational texts or literature.
Some things I like about Readability Studio are that includes 18 different scales, explains each, and suggests scales depending on your audience or type of literature. It also gives lists of difficult words and provides other useful information about the text.
If you’re writing materials for the web (open or not), they are likely to be read by a much broader audience than you intend. Giving some thought to readability is a gift to these readers wherever they are.