IMPACT OF ASSESSING DIGITAL
WRITING ON THE PERFORMANCE OF
HIGH-ABILITY STUDENTS
Jassie Lim & Hasanah Alfie
Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary)
London International Conference on Education 2014
Context
Autonomy
in the
curriculum
Highability
learners
RGS 1:1
How should we
teach writing in
the RGS
classroom?
Interactive Nature of Digital Writing
• Digital writing, unlike
traditional writing,
which is passive and
solitary, facilitates
interaction between
reader, writer and the
medium (Ferris, 2002).
Writer
Medium
Reader
• “[Blogs] engage people
in collaborative activity,
knowledge sharing,
reflection and debate”
(Williams & Jacobs,
2004)
Research Aim and Questions
Language Use
How does the
assessment of digital
writing impact the
performance of highability students?
Craft
Metacognition
Use of Visual Text
METHODOLOGY
This study investigates the performance of Year 3 students in a Blog Writing
task vis-à-vis their performance in a Year 2 Biography Writing task and an
Exposition Writing task in Year 3.
Y2 Biography
Y3 Blog
Y3 Exposition
Type of
Alternative
Assessment Assessment
Alternative
Assessment
Pen-and-Paper
Assessment
Duration
6 Weeks
1h 15 min
6 Weeks
Assessment • Craft
• Craft
• Craft
Criteria
• Language
• Language
• Language
• Metacognition • Metacognition
• Visual
METHODOLOGY
2nd Comparison
1st Comparison
BIOGRAPHY
WRITING
TASK
BLOG
WRITING
TASK
Oct 2012
Apr 2013
Sep 2013
Academic Year 2
Academic Year 3
Academic Year 3
EXPOSITION
WRITING
TASK
METHODOLOGY
Quantitative Analysis
• Random sampling of 45
students from 3 bands (low,
medium & high), based on their
Biography Writing scores
• Compare these 45 students’
scores for Blog Writing with
their scores for Biography
Writing
• The same students’ scores for
Exposition Writing are tracked
to compare performance
Qualitative Analysis
• Focus group discussion with
3 English Language teachers
who taught the Blog Writing
unit
• Focus group discussion with
9 Year 3 students (random
sampling from 3 bands,
based on their blog writing
scores)
Limitations
• Small sample size
• Comparison between different genres
• Changes in performance may be due to variables other
than the online medium
FINDINGS & DISCUSSION
FDG Findings & Scores Analysis
Comparing Blog Task with Biography Task (Total Score)
BIO_TS
BLOG_TS
 Significant improvement in the total score of students in the Low
Band.
 Dip in scores for some from the High Band
Comparing Blog Task with Exposition Task (Total Score)
120.00
100.00
Total Score
80.00
Blog TS
Series1
60.00
Series2
Expo TS
40.00
20.00
0.00
Student Sample
 No significant difference in overall performance in the two tasks
Language Use
Comparison of language scores
across the writing tasks
Biog
Blog
Expo
79.47
79.26
79.26
Median 75.00
75.00
75.00
Mode
75.00
75.00
75.00
SD
12.12
9.50
12.39
Mean
Findings

No significant impact on the
language performance of
students in both comparisons

Significant difference in the
standard deviation, with a
smaller spread of scores
observed in the Blog task,
compared to the Biography
and Exposition tasks
Language Use
Discussion:
• Students have a firm grasp of language mechanics;
hence, the online language tools only have a marginal
effect on their language performance.
• Teachers in the focus group discussion suggested that
while the simpler, more concise style of blog writing may
have helped students from the Low Band to level up, the
High Band students seemed to find the same style
‘restrictive’, and did not perform as expected.
Language Use
Consistent with FGD findings:
“I think for my class, a lot of them are fairly proficient already
but they struggled with paring it down to fit the word limit
without compromising their thoughts. Interestingly enough,
the better kids did not actually do as well for blog PT because
their essays ended up really disjointed and broken because
they very briefly touched on a point and then they moved on.
So actually, that was one thing that they were complaining
about, in terms of the word limit.” (Teacher)
“I don’t think it improved...my writing
is really draggy and overly
descriptive.” (Student)
“...my writing ability remained
stagnant.” (Student)
Language Use
Question
• With online spell and grammar checks at the disposal
of students, does the switch to an online medium have
an impact on students’ language performance?
Implications
• Diminished relevance of assessing language accuracy
for this group of students
• Need for differentiated instruction for students of
varying language abilities
• Go beyond the assessment of language accuracy in
digital writing tasks; focus on the development of style
and voice in students’ writing
Craft
Question
• With free access to a vast and diverse pool of information
on the Internet and control over their choice of information,
do students necessarily produce stronger content?
Craft
Comparing Blog with Biography
Biog
Blog
Expo
Mean
60.64
76.41
77.26
Median
58.33
75.00
75.00
Mode
50.00
75.00
75.00
SD
14.71
14.04
10.62
Use of the online medium seems
to have contributed to the better
performance in Craft
Discussion
Teachers in the FGD suggested
that a keener sense of audience
awareness may have been the
reason for improvement:
“Students may not write in a very
engaging manner in regular essays
and still get away with it, but they
can’t get away with it in blogs.”
“Students know that anyone can
access a blog; therefore, they are
more aware of the need to engage
the audience at a more personal
level.”
Craft
Comparing Blog with Exposition
Biog
Blog
Expo
Mean
60.64
76.41
77.26
Median
58.33
75.00
75.00
Mode
50.00
75.00
75.00
SD
14.71
14.04
10.62
• No significant difference was
observed in the Craft scores; in
fact, a wider SD is observed for
the Blog task
• Use of the online medium did not
contribute significantly to the
performance in Craft
Discussion
• Students in FGD indicated that
the use of the online medium
can be a hindrance to their
performance.
• They think that the Exposition
task is ‘fairer’ since ‘nobody
has access to [external]
resources’, and expressed their
difficulty searching for relevant
information.
Craft
Recommendations:
• Help students make sense of the vast amount of
information they encounter on the Internet
• Setting criteria for selecting online information
• Carrying out analysis of online articles using critical thinking
tools like the Richard Paul’s Wheel of Reasoning
• Emphasise the ethics of online writing and academic
integrity
• Providing clear instructions on how sources can be credited
through the use of hyperlinks and reference lists.
• Making it a requirement for students to submit their work
via plagiarism detection software
Metacognition
Question
• In the process of writing, one needs to be
conscious of how linguistic choices contribute
to rhetorical aims. Does the presence of other
online users, who may respond to one’s writing,
sharpen students’ awareness of their own
thought processes?
Metacognition
Scores Analysis
Biog
Blog
Expo
54.96
78.19
-
Median 50.00
42.00
Mode
75.00
-
75.00
-
22.16
19.24
-
Mean
SD
Mean, mode and median are
consistently higher and the standard
deviation smaller
FGD
• Students’ feedback from the
FGD shows their interest and
motivation when attempting this
aspect of the Blog task:
• “...writing comments makes
you analytical.”
• “...tone is really important...
learnt how to say something
tactfully, justify and say it in an
acceptable way and not to put
the person down.”
•
“... At some point in time, we
are expected to give
feedback...it is good to
sound sophisticated.”
Metacognition
Challenge
• Does the reflection task capture a student’s thinking of her
thinking, or a patchwork of comments from her peers
posted on her blog?
• Social dimension in social media platforms is a doubleedged sword:
• Promotes multiplicity of viewpoints
• Encourages predictability in response, as members of
the online community parrot one another, in an attempt
to maintain amicability
Metacognition
Recommendations:
 Assess a stretch of an online dialogue, instead of an
individual reflection
 Ebb and flow of a conversation allows the teacher to
more accurately rate the student’s reasoning ability
 This is more in accord with the interactivity that is
inherent in social media platforms.
Use of Visual Text
Scores Analysis
Blog Total
Score (with
Visual)
Exposition
Total Score
Mean
75.47
78.12
Median
76.39
78.57
Mode
61.11
71.43
SD
11.47
9.17
The mean and mode dropped
significantly when the visual
component of the Blog task is
included in the comparison
FDG
• Comments from the students in
the focus group discussion
revealed their discomfort and
frustration with their experience
of using visual texts in their
blog posts. Some of their
comments include:
• “What you think is suitable may
not be suitable for the teacher.”
• “What is meant by ‘relevant’?”
• “Why should one be concerned
with design and layout?”
Use of Visual Text
Discussion:
• Inadequate explanation, on the part of the teachers, of
what makes an appropriate choice of visual text for a
blog post
•
A lack of appreciation, on the part of the student, for the
powerful impact that an image can have on a blog post.
•
Insufficient instruction on the role played by visual text
in digital writing tasks can result in frustration for both
the assessor and student.
Use of Visual Text
Recommendations:
• Include a study of verbal-visual text relationship in the
teaching and assessing of digital writing:
• Verbal text and visual text belong to two different semiotic systems,
each with a grammar of its own.
• Need to be familiar with their relationship types, be it
complementary, contradictory, symbolic or metaphorical, and have
an understanding of their possible effect on the reader.
• Adopt a spiral approach, where skills and knowledge can
be introduced with increasingly complexity, over a few
academic years.
Conclusions
• Process of interpreting scores for digital writing tasks can
be a complex one with assumptions embedded.
• Students may be familiar with and are users of social media but
they may not know how to search for information and interact
appropriately with other online users.
• Students may be digital natives but may not know how to select
and read visual images.
• A differentiated approach needs to be adopted in the
instruction for language use, where the varied language
learning needs of students can be adequately addressed.
Contact Details
Hasanah Alfie:
Jassie Teo:
jassie.teo@rgs.edu.sg
hasanah.alfie@rgs.edu.sg