Representational transformations : using maps to write essays

This research was supported by NSERC (The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) RGPIN-2020-04401 and EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) EP/T518062/1.Essay-writing is a complex, cognitively demanding activity. Essay-writers must synthesise source texts and original ideas into a textual essay. Previous work found that writers produce better essays when they create effective intermediate representations. Diagrams, such as concept maps and argument maps, are particularly effective. However, there is insufficient knowledge about how people use these intermediate representations in their essay-writing workflow. Understanding these processes is critical to inform the design of tools to support workflows incorporating intermediate representations. We present the findings of a study, in which 20 students planned and wrote essays. Participants used a tool that we developed, Write Reason, which combines a free-form mapping interface with an essay-writing interface. This let us observe the types of intermediate representations participants built, and crucially, the process of how they used and moved between them. The key insight is that much of the important cognitive processing did not happen within a single representation, but instead in the processes that moved between multiple representations. We label these processes `representational transformations'. Our analysis characterises key properties of these transformations: cardinality, explicitness, and change in representation type. We also discuss research questions surfaced by the focus on transformations, and implications for tool designers.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Supporting Writing Skills in the Common Core State Standards for Students in Grades 3-5 with Executive Functioning and Learning Difficulties: A Teacher’s Toolkit

Poor writers do not display the skills and strategies employed by skilled writers. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) set forth an expectation that all children will become skilled writers; yet, for most students with executive functioning weakness and/or learning disabilities, writing is the most challenging academic task. For poor writers to begin to develop essential skills for college and career readiness and the willingness to write, teachers need to provide students with specialized materials and teach instructional strategies that students can utilize independently. The purpose of this thesis was to create a toolkit for grade 3-5 teachers containing a range of instructional tools and strategies that target the needs of struggling writers challenged to master the CCSS writing standards

Supporting Human Cognitive Writing Processes: Towards a Taxonomy of Writing Support Systems

In the field of natural language processing (NLP), advances in transformer architectures and large-scale language models have led to a plethora of designs and research on a new class of information systems (IS) called writing support systems, which help users plan, write, and revise their texts. Despite the growing interest in writing support systems in research, there needs to be more common knowledge about the different design elements of writing support systems. Our goal is, therefore, to develop a taxonomy to classify writing support systems into three main categories (technology, task/structure, and user). We evaluated and refined our taxonomy with seven interviewees with domain expertise, identified three clusters in the reviewed literature, and derived five archetypes of writing support system applications based on our categorization. Finally, we formulate a new research agenda to guide researchers in the development and evaluation of writing support systems

A realist approach towards student application of agency, culture and social structures in demonstration of competency in argumentative writing

In his thesis, “A realist approach towards students’ application of agency, culture and social structures in demonstration of competency in argumentative writing”, the study explored intersectionality between first-year science students’ cultural identities and the ways these aspects of students’ epistemologies weave with their attempts to demonstrate competency in written, dialectical and rhetorical argumentation. The researcher employed Margaret Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic model to divide students’ experiences into three chronological phases. These time periods, which spanned the pre-university domain as well as the first and second semesters, were termed the conditioning, interactive and elaboration phases of students’ Discourses (Archer, 1995). By analytically employing the morphogenetic cycle, this study simultaneously applied Gee’s (2012) theory of Discourse to emphasise epistemic shifts, development and constraints in students’ argumentation. The findings highlighted the interplay between and efficacy of on- and off-campus social structures, culture and agency as causal mechanisms in students’ methods of participating in dialectical, rhetorical and written argumentation. Examples of active entities in students’ argumentative Discourse emergence include their families, cultural communities, schools, degree programmes and professional communities. Findings from the study revealed that the majority of the participants experienced significant modifications to their scientific Discourses after reaching the end of the academic year. To argue effectively, first-year students had to modify their methods of participation in academic dialect and rhetoric that feed into their argumentative writing. The study concluded that due to the distinct cultural environment that universities represent when contrasted with the pre-tertiary experiences of all first-years, pedagogic mechanisms should be activated that facilitate their induction into argumentative, dialectical and rhetorical interactions, including writing, across the entire academic year.Thesis (PhD (Linguistics))--University of Pretoria, 2021.Unit for Academic LiteracyPhD (Linguistics)Unrestricte

Using Critical Questions to Improve Perspective Taking Online

As technology continues to change human interactions, it has become increasingly important to create computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments that enhance perspective taking to support constructive groupwork. To meet these aims, this study examined perspective taking before and after a social annotation activity that incorporated critical questions in the experimental condition. Results from 163 undergraduate students showed that using critical questions improved the quality of perspective taking in written dialogue and using social annotation increased perspective taking over time for all participants. Findings offer important research implications in the CSCL and collaborative argumentation fields, as well as broaden opportunities for 21st century skill development in underserved student populations