[9] McNamara is the director of the Science of Learning and Educational Technology (SoLET) Lab, where she and her team research and develop intelligent tutoring systems and natural language processing software.
[12] McNamara's research focuses on the development of intelligent tutoring systems that use game-based exercises to increase learner motivation when practicing reading and writing strategies.
[16] With Arthur Graesser, McNamara developed Coh-Metrix, a computational tool for evaluating text readability based on measuring levels of cohesion, world knowledge, language and discourse characteristics.
[17] Coh-Metrix has made it easier for researchers and publishers to assess text difficulty and cohesion without relying on previous methods that focused primarily on word and sentence length.
These include Reading Comprehension Strategies: Theories, Interventions, and Technologies;[18] Automated Evaluation of Text and Discourse with Coh-Metrix[19] with Arthur Graesser, Philip M. McCarthy, and Zhiqiang Cai; Handbook of Latent Semantic Analysis[20] with Thomas K. Landauer, Simon Dennis, and Walter Kintsch; Adaptive Educational Technologies for Literacy Instruction[21] with Scott A. Crossley; and Cognition in Education (Ed Psych Insights)[22] with Matthew T. McCrudden.