The Effect of
Online
Environments on
the Characteristics
of Student Writing
Sean P.Na!
*

our context:

an authentic and WIDE audience:

an authentic and WIDE audience:

‘twas the night before a due date...

How do online environments impact
the characteristics of student
writing and subsequent achievement?

...as measured by summative unit
exam scores, readability, and
word count.

methods:

• summary assigned at culmination of
unit- prior to exam
• student lineup by age- counted
off by twos- split into two groups
of ten
• laid out comprehensive summary
assignment: use all concepts, cite
at least once source.

• differentiated assignment for each
group:
• group 1- use MS Word, e-mail
product directly to me
• group 2- add directly to blog
on class network at: http://
mwsu-bio101.ning.com

• copy/paste each summary into MS
Word to analyze word count &
reliability
• score exams
• analyze all data in class with
students
• students & teacher reflect on the
project in network discussion thread

results:

(Table 1) Students who constructed comprehensive
summary of nutrition unit via online blog post for a
wide and potentially global audience (even group):

(Table 2) Students who constructed comprehensive
summary of nutrition unit via MS Word document handed
in directly to teacher (odd group):

a closer look...
traditional online
average exam score: 43.2 43.4
readability: 9.1 8.2
word count: 638 399

why?

a typical
“traditional
report”
count:
566
score:
50

a typical,
“blog post”,
or “post”
count:
399
score:
51

*in contrast
to the blog...
here we see a
“discussion
thread”

“It appeared that the papers had a
higher readability and word count,
which I kind of expected because I
think people tend to write more
formally on papers, whereas the
blog posts tend to be more opinion
and informal writing.”
~RH

this:
d
lize orum
uti n f
s
rk i cussio
n etwo dis
t h is r the
y fo
la r g el

vs. this:
s to
k tend os ts
twor blog p
i s ne mal
e th e for
wh il mor
uti lize

conclusions:

•writing a comprehensive summary seems to be an
effective pre-exam strategy, regardless of format
•the nature of the summary seemed to do little
to affect overall scores in this study
•students writing online submitted significantly
more concise summaries with smaller word counts

my inference:
Online writing is a potentially
powerful tool for summarization
of complex content.

end.
*thanks to DeclanTM on Flickr for keyboard image in title slide