Net Generation Researchers: An Inquiry Into Hypertext Reading And Research Strategies Of First-year Composition Students

Hypertext and hyperlinks are present on almost every web site or electronic document. As integral components of visual rhetoric, they are foundational to any discussion of technology and literacy. This inquiry is designed to explore first-year composition students\u27 advances in technological literacy, specifically hypertext reading and research strategies. To accomplish this, a hypertext-reading project was designed to investigate the ways in which first-year composition students assimilate and employ hypertext information as a source from which they must extract information to use in the development of an argument. A program, designed and written specifically for this project, presented research participants, 76 students enrolled in second semester first-year composition, the components of hypertext reading as an online reading and research activity. Participants first completed a technology survey designed to reveal each participant\u27s prior experience and self-perceived expertise with current technology, after which they completed a two-part exercise consisting of a hypertext reading assignment and a post-reading questionnaire. Participants were instructed to use their reading to inform and develop a thesis for an argument. The article selected for this study was Illegal Immigration, accessed by navigating to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration. The article discusses a current controversial national concern, illegal immigration. While the use of Wikipedia, an online user-edited encyclopedia, often raises credibility concerns, the site in general offers excellent examples of hypertext reading that include textual as well as graphic links. In the analysis, it is revealed that while the study group rated themselves highly proficient users of Internet search engines, email, social networking, and word processing applications, the majority initially did not recognize a relationship between the actions they take as users of those applications and hyperlinks or hypertext. Post-reading responses revealed that the majority of the group read the article from top to bottom with few to no diversions. Furthermore, while most did recognize the hyperlinks as information portals, they made conscious decisions to not access the links for a variety of stated and implied reasons. This research involved a relatively small student sample that defines the limited scope of the findings; however, the data suggests attitudes and expectations of this group that may reflect student populations with similar or shared demographics. These data are used to inform potential pedagogical application suggestions, including the usefulness of technological proficiency assessments and research using technology within the classroom as well as in external assignments

A Comparative Study Of The Printed And Hypertext Novel 10:01 By Lance Olsen

Dalam era pascamoden, kesan daripada pengaruh timbalbalik antara novel bercetak dan media digital, telah menghasilkan antara naratif dengan persekitaran interaktif sehingga dapat melahirkan genre-genre baru seperti cereka hiperteks. In the postmodern era, the mutual impression between printed literature and digital media has embedded narratives into interactive environments and new genres like hypertext fiction are created

Using the organizational and narrative thread structures in an e-book to support comprehension.

Stories, themes, concepts and references are organized structurally and purposefully in most books. A person reading a book needs to understand themes and concepts within the context. Schanks Dynamic Memory theory suggested that building on existing memory structures is essential to cognition and learning. Pirolli and Card emphasized the need to provide people with an independent and improved ability to access and understand information in their information seeking activities. Through a review of users reading behaviours and of existing e-Book user interfaces, we found that current e-Book browsers provide minimal support for comprehending the content of large and complex books. Readers of an e-Book need user interfaces that present and relate the organizational and narrative structures, and moreover, reveal the thematic structures. This thesis addresses the problem of providing readers with effective scaffolding of multiple structures of an e-Book in the user interface to support reading for comprehension. Recognising a story or topic as the basic unit in a book, we developed novel story segmentation techniques for discovering narrative segments, and adapted story linking techniques for linking narrative threads in semi-structured linear texts of an e-Book. We then designed an e-Book user interface to present the complex structures of the e-Book, as well as to assist the reader to discover these structures. We designed and developed evaluation methodologies to investigate reading and comprehension in e-Books, in order to assess the effectiveness of this user interface. We designed semi-directed reading tasks using a Story-Theme Map, and a set of corresponding measurements for the answers. We conducted user evaluations with book readers. Participants were asked to read stories, to browse and link related stories, and to identify major themes of stories in an e-Book. This thesis reports the experimental design and results in detail. The results confirmed that the e-Book interface helped readers perform reading tasks more effectively. The most important and interesting finding is that the interface proved to be more helpful to novice readers who had little background knowledge of the book. In addition, each component that supported the user interface was evaluated separately in a laboratory setting and, these results too are reported in the thesis

A Description of the Meaning-Making Strategies Reported by Proficient Readers and Writers.

The purpose of this study was to develop a description of the cognitive strategies reported by proficient readers and writers as they completed a variety of reading and writing tasks. Seven above-average, twelfth-grade students were selected as subjects from teacher recommendations and standardized test scores. Each subject was involved in five data collection sessions: (a) a writing assessment/think aloud practice session, (b) writing a reflexive task, (c) writing an extensive task, (d) reading a concrete text, and (e) reading an abstract text. All sessions were held with subjects individually. The data collection techniques included: (a) recording the thoughts subjects reported as they completed the tasks, (b) cued retrospective reports, and (c) researcher observation notes. From this data eight categories of strategies were identified: (a) monitoring, (b) phrasing content, (c) using content prior knowledge, (d) using text form knowledge, (e) rereading, (f) questioning, (g) inferencing, and (h) making connections to author/audience. Frequency counts of the occurrences indicated that the subjects used the strategies of monitoring, rereading, and phrasing content most frequently during their meaning making. The use of these strategies differed by tasks more for reading than for writing. Strategy use for the reading differed most for phrasing content, monitoring, rereading, using content knowledge, and inferencing. Strategy use for writing differed less with noticeable differences occurring for using text form knowledge and questioning

Content and Language Integrated Learning for First and Second Year University Students - Aspirations, Challenges and Solutions

This paper offers an overview of two modules from the Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore. These belong to a programme entitled the Ideas and Exposition Modules (IEM) and they pertain to a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. The courses and some of the main learning objectives are explained. These are critical thinking abilities; research skills; and academic study skills. It is surmised that these are useful for all students independent of their academic discipline. The challenges that the lecturer and students face during the courses are also presented. These challenges often arise because students are from different educational cultures and academic disciplines, and as a result, classes tend to be comprised of students with mixed interests, English language levels and academic research and writing experience. Students also tend to vary in their abilities to think critically and work independently. The first section in this paper looks at the educational context of the IEM courses; the second, presents the core learning outcomes aspired to; the third, examines the challenges faced and how these are met by the tutor and students taking the courses. The final section offers a brief overview of the paper and considers the future for this genre of course, particularly how students benefit from a more student-centered, individualized educational practice today

Arguing on-line and off: a study of students' argumentation in the context of computer-mediated discussion and individually written assignments.

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

English Composition 100: Best Practices for Online Instruction

The objective of this dissertation is to explore the process of teaching English Composition in the asynchronous online format and to make recommendations for the best possible approach for continued student success. The teaching of English Composition is a complex subject and no two teachers will have the same approach. This matter is further complicated when online instruction is explored. An instructor cannot transplant an in-class course into the online format and expect the same results. This dissertation explores the best possible approach to teaching English Composition in an online environment with the use of multimedia applications. This exploration will address current methods of teaching English Composition online, will evaluate what seems to work well, will explore the concerns highlighted by educators and practitioners involved with English Composition online, and will highlight additional recommended advancements, both in methods of approach and technological innovations, that can bring to light instructional practices for further evaluation. This study will lead to an understanding of what these new emerging technologies are and the specifics of their use by both instructors and students alike online, and it will identify best practices in teaching English Composition online for the immediate future

Scientific Research, Writing, and Dissemination (Part 3/4): Scientific Writing

This is the-third-paper, in-tetrology on the Scientific Research, Writing and Dissemination. Writing is a-universal-type of formal-scientific-communication, and yet, academics/researchers/scientists have a-rather dreadful-reputation, for being un-interesting, monotonous and, even, pathetically ‘dry’ writers. One-reason, behind-that, could-be, that majority of scientists are not, really, trained-writers. Moreover, pressure to-publish, poorly-prepared-manuscripts, and multiple-rejections, by-various-journals, dampen the-spirits of untrained-academic-writers, resulting in their-reduced-productivity. Scientific-style-writing may be ‘thorny’, in the-beginning, for ‘greenhorn’-writers, but clear-communication and concise-writing, can-be-trained. The-main-objective of this-paper is to-offer early-stage-researchers (beginner researchers and scientific writing-apprentices) easy-applicable, yet, theoretically-insightful-introduction, to-the structural-components of-a-scientific-paper and basic-writing-guidelines. The-seasoned-writers will-also find few-interesting revelations and ‘food-for-taught’. This-paper focuses on-scientific-writing (mainly for peer-reviewed publication) and largely presumes no explicit-disciplinary perspective, however, some-emphasis on-engineering-research, is given. The-main-instruments applied in this-study were: a-survey and a document-analysis. The-respondents identified, that almost-every-section of a-scientific-paper, is challenging, for them, although to a-different-extent. Majority (64%) indicated that they have-experienced rejections, in-their-publishing-endeavors, while the-rest said, that all-their-submissions, for-review, were successful. Out of those, experienced rejection, 57% stated, that, they usually re-submit, their-manuscript, to a-different-journal, after improving or correcting it, while 43 % preferred to-do nothing, after the rejection. 55% also confessed that they: (1) are not very-confident, in their-ability, to-write (for scientific- publication) in-English, and (2) do-not-know exactly what constitutes a-good-research-paper and fine scientific-writing. 36% stated that they are not so-sure about the-proper-structure of a-scientific-paper. The-study also-revealed some-signs of Dunning-Kruger Effect, in-writing, particularly, among-younger faculty. To-address the-findings of the-research, and to-give a-multifaceted-perspective, on-the scientific-writing, the-paper, in-addition, presents a-fusion of guiding-principles, found in-literature, and supplemented by the-author’ input, about structuring and writing a-scientific-paper. In-particular, the-following was elaborated on: Misconceptions about scientific-writing; Expanded ‘Hourglass-Model’, based on the-IMRaD-format; Micro-issues of writing (grammar and punctuations); How to-deal with-rejection of a-manuscript; English as de facto language of scientific-communication; Characteristics of good-scientific-paper and writing-style; and Establishing one’s unique-voice, in-scientific-writing, among-others. The-study is important; in making a-contribution (in-its-small-way) to-the-body of knowledge, on-the-subject-matter, and it-is-potentially-beneficial, to-scientific-writers, at any-stage, of their-research and scientific-writing- career. Keywords: scholarly article, paper structure; journal publications, English, rejection, hyphen

Processing Structured Hypermedia : A Matter of Style

With the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early nineties, hypermedia has become the uniform interface to the wide variety of information sources available over the Internet. The full potential of the Web, however, can only be realized by building on the strengths of its underlying research fields. This book describes the areas of hypertext, multimedia, electronic publishing and the World Wide Web and points out fundamental similarities and differences in approaches towards the processing of information. It gives an overview of the dominant models and tools developed in these fields and describes the key interrelationships and mutual incompatibilities. In addition to a formal specification of a selection of these models, the book discusses the impact of the models described on the software architectures that have been developed for processing hypermedia documents. Two example hypermedia architectures are described in more detail: the DejaVu object-oriented hypermedia framework, developed at the VU, and CWI's Berlage environment for time-based hypermedia document transformations