TY - JOUR
T1 - Strategy Uptake in Writing Pal
T2 - Adaptive Feedback and Instruction
AU - Butterfuss, Reese
AU - Roscoe, Rod D.
AU - Allen, Laura K.
AU - McCarthy, Kathryn S.
AU - McNamara, Danielle S.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported in part by IES Grants R305A180261 and R305A180144, as well as the Office of Naval Research (Grant: N00014-17-1-2300). Opinions, conclusions, or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the view of the Department of Education, IES, or the Office of Naval Research.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - The present study examined the extent to which adaptive feedback and just-in-time writing strategy instruction improved the quality of high school students’ persuasive essays in the context of the Writing Pal (W-Pal). W-Pal is a technology-based writing tool that integrates automated writing evaluation into an intelligent tutoring system. Students wrote a pretest essay, engaged with W-Pal’s adaptive instruction over the course of four training sessions, and then completed a posttest essay. For each training session, W-Pal differentiated strategy instruction for each student based on specific weaknesses in the initial training essays prior to providing the opportunity to revise. The results indicated that essay quality improved overall from pretest to posttest with respect to holistic quality, as well as several specific dimensions of essay quality, particularly for students with lower literacy skills. Moreover, students’ scores on some of the training essays improved from the initial to revised version on the dimensions of essay quality that were targeted by instruction, whereas scores did not improve on the dimensions that were not targeted by instruction. Overall, the results suggest that W-Pal’s adaptive strategy instruction can improve the quality of students’ essays overall, as well as more specific dimensions of essay quality.
AB - The present study examined the extent to which adaptive feedback and just-in-time writing strategy instruction improved the quality of high school students’ persuasive essays in the context of the Writing Pal (W-Pal). W-Pal is a technology-based writing tool that integrates automated writing evaluation into an intelligent tutoring system. Students wrote a pretest essay, engaged with W-Pal’s adaptive instruction over the course of four training sessions, and then completed a posttest essay. For each training session, W-Pal differentiated strategy instruction for each student based on specific weaknesses in the initial training essays prior to providing the opportunity to revise. The results indicated that essay quality improved overall from pretest to posttest with respect to holistic quality, as well as several specific dimensions of essay quality, particularly for students with lower literacy skills. Moreover, students’ scores on some of the training essays improved from the initial to revised version on the dimensions of essay quality that were targeted by instruction, whereas scores did not improve on the dimensions that were not targeted by instruction. Overall, the results suggest that W-Pal’s adaptive strategy instruction can improve the quality of students’ essays overall, as well as more specific dimensions of essay quality.
KW - adaptive instruction
KW - automated writing evaluation
KW - intelligent tutoring systems
KW - writing strategies
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U2 - 10.1177/07356331211045304
DO - 10.1177/07356331211045304
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85130164562
SN - 0735-6331
VL - 60
SP - 696
EP - 721
JO - Journal of Educational Computing Research
JF - Journal of Educational Computing Research
IS - 3
ER -