Understanding Graduate Writers’ Interaction with and Impact of the Research Writing Tutor during Revision

Abstract

Teaching the craft of written science communication is an arduous task that requires familiarity with disciplinary writing conventions. With the burgeoning of technological advancements, practitioners preparing novice research writers can begin to augment teaching and learning with activities in digital writing environments attuned to the conventions of scientific writing in the disciplines. The Research Writing Tutor (RWT) is one such technology. Grounded in an integrative theoretical framework, it was designed to help students acquire knowledge about the research article genre and develop research writing competence. One of its modules was designed to facilitate revision by providing different forms of automated feedback and scaffolding that are genre-based and discipline-specific. This study explores whether and how the features of the RWT may impact revision while using this module of the tool. Drawing from cognitive writing modeling, this study investigates the behaviors of a multidisciplinary group of 11 graduate-student writers by exploring how they interacted with the RWT’s features and how this interaction may create conditions for enhanced revision processes and text modifications. Findings demonstrate promising potential for the use of this automated feedback tool in fostering writers’ metacognitive processing during revision. This research adds to theory on cognitive writing models by acknowledging the evolving role of digital environments in writing practices and offering insights into future development of automated tools for genre-based writing instruction.