Profiles of students' prewriting strategies: Information seeking behavior and outlining during digital writing
Submitted by:
Hyeyoun Kim
Abstract:
Prewriting activities have been emphasized as one of the most important and effective strategies during writing by many researchers and practitioners (Harris et al., 2008; Hayes & Nash, 1996; Kellogg, 1990). However, the detailed features and processes of digital prewriting have not been well investigated comparing to those of handwriting. The purpose of the study is to classify students’ prewriting strategies into an adequate number of profiles that reflects their actual use during digital writing and to draw educational implications from the analysis and result. For this, the whole digital writing processes of 105 undergraduate students were recorded and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative coding, and latent profile analysis (LPA). In particular, the current study mainly focused on information seeking behavior (i.e., internet searching) and outlining, two representative digital prewriting strategies, to verify students’ strategies in actual use. As for information seeking behaviors, 7 pre-defined patterns via 3 different criteria were coded in terms of Likert-scales. Quantity of information seeking behaviors was also measured, by checking time to complete the task, number of steps and queries, and number of search terms per query. As for outlining behaviors, coding by Likert-scales was also conducted in terms of two criteria on the basis of Kellogg (1990): the extent of clustering and hierarchy. Mixture regression of prewriting profiles on text quality was also conducted to confirm the impact of each prewriting profile and to obtain instructional implications. As a result, five profiles were extracted as patterns of prewriting strategies with regard to information seeking and outlining behaviors. The detailed discussion on each profile and their influence on text quality will offer some instructional suggestions.
Keywords: Prewriting, Writing strategies, Digital writing, Information seeking, Outlining
References
Harris, K. R., Graham, S., Mason, L. H., & Friedlander, B. (2008). Powerful writing strategies for all students. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
Hayes, J. R., & Nash, J. G. (1996). On the nature of planning in writing. In C. M. Levy & S. Ransdell (Eds.), The Science of Writing: Theories, Methods, individual differences, and Applications (pp. 29-56). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kellogg, R. T. (1990). Effectiveness of Prewriting Strategies as a Function of Task Demands. The American Journal of Psychology, 103(3), 327-342.