TLA Travel Grant Blog for Jill A Yamashita
I presented a poster at the Association for Psychological Science Convention in New York City,
NY. This convention included many professionals’ research investigating a variety of
Psychological topics.
My poster examined pedagogy (e.g. letter writing versus paper writing assignments) and learning
in the classroom. It was titled “A Comparison between Letter Writing and Paper Writing on
Learning”.
Letter-writing assignments have been found to enrich student learning (Dunn, 2000; Junn, 1989).
The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between letter and paper writing
assignments on learning. Two versions of each memory writing assignment were created: a letter
and a paper version.
Participants: Twenty-nine students enrolled in an upper division Psychology course on human
memory volunteered for this study. One student’s scores were omitted for not following
directions.
Procedure: Students were randomly assigned to one of two groups (e.g. A or B). Group A wrote
a letter for the first assignment and then a paper for the second assignment, and group B wrote a
paper first then a letter. The letter version required students to write to a friend about the memory
topic and apply the material to themselves. The paper version had students write a paper about a
memory topic without applying it to themselves but apply it to a non-personal example. Each
version of the assignment required materials from the book and lecture to be discussed. Multiple
choice quizzes were written for each assignment to test the students’ learning of the memory
material from the assignments. The grades for the quizzes were recorded and then categorized
into pass (75% and above) or fail (below 75%) groups.
Results: A 2 (letter/paper assignment) x 2 (pass/fail grade) Chi-Square analysis was done for
each assignment. There was no significant difference between the letter and paper conditions for
assignment one (Χ2 (1) = 1.348, p = .246). There was also no significant difference between the
assignment conditions for assignment two (Χ2 (1) = 0.326, p = .568).
Conclusion: The type of assignment did not affect the students’ scores. This means that the
learning measured by the quizzes was relatively the same for both the letter and paper version of
the assignment. This is counter to what previous research has shown (Dunn, 2000; Junn, 1989).
Since the two versions of the assignment lead to similar amounts of learning according this data,
then the choice for which version of assignment to use may be determined by other factors.
Letter writing had been shown to reduce the anxiety of writing a paper (Junn, 1989).
References
Dunn, D.S. (2000). Letter exchanges on Statistics and Research Methods; Writing, responding,
and learning. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 128-130.
Junn, E.N. (1989). “Dear Mom and Dad”: Using personal letters to enhance students’
understanding of Developmental issues. Teaching of Psychology, 16, 135-139.
Most of the feedback I received were positive responses to my poster. Many were interested in
the pedagogy examined and had interesting comments and suggestions. It was great to hear about
new ideas for this line of research.
My major insight or reflection was that this opportunity allowed me to disseminate my results to
many other Psychologists, who may now choose to try using a letter writing assignment instead
of a paper one. I was able to reach researchers who did not know about this area of study. I also
was able to reflect upon the study that I did and come up with new ideas of what I can do in the
future. Overall, it was a great experience and I really appreciate TLA in supporting my research.