Getting from Discussion to Writing--with Maps
http://media.usm.maine.edu/~lenny/ivla_presentation.ppt
44th Annual Conference of the International Visual
Literacy Association, October 11, 2012
www.ivla.org
Lenny Shedletsky
lenny@maine.edu
Report on Writing Test
• writing test [national test of writing for grades
8 &12, nearly ¾ fall short, appeared 9-15-12]
• “The Education Department judged writing
based on organization, level of detail and
variety of sentence structure. The students
wrote for 30 minutes.”
From the newspaper report on
writing [9-15-12]
• Nearly three-quarters of the eighth- and 12th-graders failed to achieve
proficiency on a national writing test, according to a U.S. government
report released Friday.
• Most students' writing "falls far short of the well-organized, welldeveloped prose that connects with those they are trying to reach," Susan
Pimentel, a member of the U.S. Education Department board overseeing
the test, said in a statement.
• The new version of the test, officially called the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, offered students the tools of modern writing: a
laptop with a word-processing program, including spell-check, cutting and
pasting and other editing functions, as well as a thesaurus.
• More than 24,000 eighth graders and 28,000 12th graders took the exam.
On the writing exam, 24 percent of students were considered proficient in
writing and 3 percent ranked as advanced.
SOME BACKGROUND
• Alice and I have been working on this research
program for a number of years now, adding
new empirical studies at the rate of about 1
per year.
• In essence, we began by asking what the
teacher can do to facilitate critical thinking in
discussions.
What We Tried
•
With regard to discussion, we examined a number of different approaches, including:
– Face-to-Face vs. Online discussion;
– A variety of instructional practices, e.g., summarizing discussion as individuals or as a
group;
– Level of analysis required by task, conceptual or surface;
– The use of a teaching assistant to facilitate group discussions;
– The level of personal relevance of topics;
– Rubrics of various kinds;
– Grading posts and offering detailed rubrics;
– Rubrics and peer rating;
– Peer rating plus rubrics plus emailing the rating and rationale for rating to the teacher;
•
For a Fuller Overview
• OUR FIRST 7 STUDIES
TRANSITION TO WRITING
• As you might expect, the low level of critical thinking
evidenced in discussion is also present in students’ writing
(http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu/; Van Gelder, 2005). Arum and
Roksa (2011) wrote: “ . . . many students are only minimally
improving their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning,
and writing during their journeys through higher education”
(p. 35).
• Here are some slides that explain how we switched into
looking at making an argument in writing:
• http://media.usm.maine.edu/~lenny/new4_mappers
copy.ppt
THE STRUGGLE WITH WRITING
• Here is an example of a student paper not elaborating or persisting with a
problem to address:
Critical Analysis #1
Symbolic Interactionism is a fun way to view this story. For instance, Goffmans theory
asserts that we are in “constant negotiation with others” to “define … the nature
of the situation” (66). In this case, it seems as though the girl is using Jane’s silence
to interpret the uncomfortable feeling of the situation. She is assuming that Jane’s
silence is creating an awkward atmosphere; however, we have no idea if Jane feels
the same way. She also mentions her unwillingness to discuss “the fact that she
was leaving”, but she is still trying to define the situation like the theory says.
However, this would be hard to do without the interaction.
In another way too, it could be assumed that Jane isn’t fulfilling her friend “role”
properly in this girl’s eyes. An example of this would be how their time spent
together had felt forced because she mentions “generally we don’t lack for
conversation”. So, the lack of a “consistent performance” (66) is causing the
tension. This lack of communication is causing lots of confusion.
MAPPING
• In an attempt to discover whether or not we can improve the
quality of essays in my 100-level Introduction to
Communication class, we designed a study to test the effects
of mapping on student essays.
• Here is a summary of what we asked for and what the
students produced:
• http://media.usm.maine.edu/~lenny/new4_mappers
copy.ppt
TEST OF MAPPING EFFECTS
• We compared two sections of the course (Fall, 2010 and Fall,
2011) for mapping’s effects on essay writing.
• We looked at 5 dependent measures:
– Word count for summarizing the Critical Incident (CI);
– Number of concepts used from the course to analyze the
CI;
– Number of Connections made between concepts and the
CI;
– Word count for summarizing the essay;
– Total number of words in the essay;
SOME OF OUR RESULTS
• AS YOU VIEW THE RESULTS KEEP IN MIND:
– PRACTICE
– MAPPING TO AID COGNITION
HOW THE DATA WERE SCORED
• ALICE ON METHOD--
COMPARISON OF COURSE INSTRUCTION vs. INDIVIDUAL
ACTUALLY MAPPING OR NOT
CONCEPTS
Mean number of Concepts used to
analyze the CI by paper (p< .05)
CONNECTIONS
Mean number of Connections made
between Concepts and the CI by Paper (p
<.05).
SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY
MEAN NUMBER OF WORDS USED TO
SUMMARIZE THE ESSAY BY PAPER AND BY
WHETHER OR NOT THE INDIVIDUAL MAPPED
TOTAL NUMBER OF WORDS IN THE
ESSAY
MEAN NUMBER OF WORDS USED TO WRITE THE
ESSAYS BY PAPER AND BY INDIVIDUALS WHO
MAPPED OR DID NOT MAP
WHAT DOES IT MEAN
• Persistence
• Writing vs. Critical Thinking
• Feeling confident about mapping