Development of software to support argumentative reading and writing by means of creating a graphic organizer from an electronic text

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a software program that supports argumentative reading and writing, especially for novice students. The software helps readers create a graphic organizer from the text as a knowledge map while they are reading and use their prior knowledge to build their own opinion as new information while they think about writing their essays. Readers using this software can read a text, underline important words or sentences, pick up and dynamically cite the underlined portions of the text onto a knowledge map as quotation nodes, illustrate a knowledge map by linking the nodes, and later write their opinion as an essay while viewing the knowledge map; thus, the software bridges argumentative reading and writing. Sixty-three freshman and sophomore students with no prior argumentative reading and writing education participated in a design case study to evaluate the software in classrooms. Thirty-four students were assigned to a class in which each student developed a knowledge map after underlining and/or highlighting a text with the software, while twenty-nine students were assigned to a class in which they simply wrote their essays after underlining and/or highlighting the text without creating knowledge maps. After receiving an instruction regarding a simplified Toulmin's model followed by instructions for the software usage in argumentative reading and writing along with reading one training text, the students read the target text and developed their essays. The results revealed that students who drew a knowledge map based on the underlining and/or highlighting of the target text developed more argumentative essays than those who did not draw maps. Further analyses revealed that developing knowledge maps fostered an ability to capture the target text's argument, and linking students' ideas to the text's argument directly on the knowledge map helped students develop more constructive essays. Accordingly, we discussed additional necessary scaffolds, such as automatic argument detection and collaborative learning functions, for improving the students' use of appropriate reading and writing strategies.

Designing a Collaborative Learning Environment for Critical Reading with Peer Response Activity

“…Our previous study [6] showed improvements in individual argumentative reading and writing to some extent; however, there were no opportunities for learners to be exposed to perspectives other than the text author's and the reader's. According to the literature discussed above, we considered that there would be fruitful opportunities in peer response activities using effective computerbased scaffolds for allowing learners to think more critically about their reading and essays.…”

“…One of the promising ways to achieve a desirable level of critical reading is to help learners create node-link representations by making graphic organizers [11], [12] such as concept maps [13] or knowledge maps [14] (for a review, see [15]). Making graphic organizers with node-link representations can help learners build constructive arguments based on their interpretations of the text [6], [16], [17] . In addition, node-link representations also allow researchers to develop a function for communication among learners that helps them take ideas described in their notes to a higher level [18] .…”

“…The eJournalPlus application (Fig. 1), which was developed as a critical reading support software, has the following functions for practicing critical reading [6] :…”

“…The authors and their colleagues developed eJournalPlus, a critical reading support application, which has functions for underlining electronic text(s), creating graphic organizer(s) based on the text(s) to allow individual learners to elicit their opinions of the text(s), and writing their opinions as an essay based on the graphic organizer(s). An evaluation of individual use of the software showed that creating a graphic organizer helped students understand the text author's arguments and make their essays more constructive [6] .…”

Interactive features of E-texts’ effects on learning: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…A review of the findings to consider which features were beneficial and which were not helpful would help in understanding these findings. There were 17 studies in which statistically significant positive effects on at least one learning measure were noted (Asrowi et al, 2019;Chang et al, 2019;Chaudhri et al, 2013;Chen et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2018;Dennis et al, 2016, Ebied 2015Jin, 2013;Hsiao et al, 2016;Jin, 2013;Li et al, 2013;Lustria, 2007;Mochizuki et al, 2019;Sommers et al, 2019;Zarzour & Sellami, 2017;Zarzour & Sellami, 2018a;Zarzour & Sellami, 2018b). Most of these studies with positive effects had multiple interactive features making it challenging to discern the features or combination of features most effective.…”