Computers and Composition最新文献

The predictive relationship between handwriting automaticity and children's writing performance is well documented. However, less is known about the relationship between keyboarding automaticity and children's keyboard-based writing performance. In this exploratory study, we examined the unique contributions of automaticity in both writing modalities in predicting Grade 2 students (N = 49) paper-based and keyboard-based writing performance (i.e., compositional quality and fluency) after controlling for students’ literacy skills (i.e., spelling, word reading, and reading comprehension), attitudes toward writing, gender, and nesting due to classroom. Multilevel modelling results showed that automaticity predicted students’ paper-based compositional quality and keyboard-based compositional quality and fluency. Findings further suggested that the relationship between automaticity and writing performance was stronger in keyboard-based text composing than in paper-based text composing. These results reinforce the role of automaticity of transcription skills in predicating the writing performance of beginning writers across modalities and stress the significance of explicit pedagogy and frequent instances of practice to promote the mastery of transcription skills across modalities in the early years of schooling.

The importance of peer review practice in writing courses has been strongly supported by pedagogical research. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study investigated three peer review modes in an undergraduate academic writing course through the lens of students’ writing performances and perceptions. The three modes are (i) face-to-face peer review (F2F), (ii) anonymous computer-mediated peer review (CMPR), and (iii) blended peer review (a blend of F2F and anonymous CMPR). Three classes enrolled in an academic writing course participated in this study. Students’ assignments were collected to analyze their writing performances. Focus group discussions (FGDs) were administered to investigate students’ perceptions of the peer review modes, including their perceived usefulness of the feedback and the review processes. The findings show that the students’ writing performances significantly improved after the peer review session in all three peer review modes, with the anonymous CMPR and the blended mode showing stronger effectiveness as compared to the F2F mode. The participants generally preferred the blended mode, which addresses the limitations of both F2F and anonymous CMPR by leveraging the merits of both. We propose the use of the blended peer review mode to accommodate different learning needs and maximize the effectiveness of peer review practice.

Addressing potential research paucity on L2 international graduate students’ academic discourse socialization in online contexts, this study investigated students in graduate programs in the United States. The study focused on how graduate students perceive the impacts of online learning on their academic discourse socialization experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adopting a qualitative approach, four participants’ perceptions were investigated through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that while digital tools, including Zoom, created some spaces for academic discourse socialization for L2 international graduate students during the pandemic, the tools also disrupted their learning in some areas. Importantly, the lack of informal social interactions in online contexts affected graduate students’ learning and participation in their communities of practice. This study suggests that in addition to in-class Zoom interactions, informal interactions are important for L2 international graduate students’ academic discourse socialization in online contexts. Pedagogical implications on incorporating Zoom and other digital tools to facilitate academic discourse socialization in online contexts are provided.

Virtual reality (VR) presents a significant opportunity to expand remote access to educational materials and writing skills development for students not able or unwilling to participate in person. However, to ensure that VR-based learning is inclusive, research designs must incorporate user experience feedback. This study examines community college students’ feedback on a virtual library tour (VRT) for an Introduction to Writing course. Because building library skills is a key objective of this course, decreasing barriers to student library access is critical. Findings from the study indicate (1) most participants had a positive response and experienced a heightened sense of control (over 70%), though nearly half (48.1%) felt that the virtual experience did not fully replicate the real-life experience, (2) participants valued the structured guidance of the tour but recommended more flexibility and user agency within the VR environment, and (3) noted technical problems related to motion sickness, sound levels, and visual clarity. The study presents specific suggestions for enhancements and underscores the importance of utilizing design research to improve user experiences with VR. Directions for future research are also discussed.

Within the growing use of peer-to-peer mobile payment apps, Venmo has proven most popular among the college-aged population in the United States. “Venmo me” is a common phrase overheard among students on college campuses. Spurred by an exchange in a course focused on social media, we investigate the uses of Venmo among students on our campus. Through interviews, we examine students’ relationships to not only the transactional but also the rhetorical aspects of Venmo, especially the social feed (unique among peer-to-peer mobile payment apps). We reflect on three recurring themes in these interviews using the concept of public displays of belongingness: insider versus outsider, requesting payment, and digital intimacy.

We share our experiences working with large-language model generative AI for a full semester in a professional writing course, integrating it into all projects. We discuss how we adapted our teaching, learning, and writing to using (or purposefully not using) AI. Issues we discuss include balancing integration of AI to avoid potential overreliance, the importance of centering authorial agency and decision-making, negotiating grading and evaluation, the benefits and drawbacks of AI throughout the writing process, and the relationships we build or could build with AI. We close with recommendations for faculty and students.

Our First-year Writing program began intentional student engagements with generative AI in the fall of 2022. We developed assignments for brainstorming research questions, writing counterarguments, and editing assistance using the AI tools Elicit, Fermat, and Wordtune. Students felt that the tools were helpful for finding ideas to get started with writing, to find sources once they had started writing, and to get help with counterarguments and alternate word choices. But when given the choice to use the assistants or not, most declined. Generative AI at this stage is unreliable, and many students found the tradeoff in reviewing AI suggestions to be too time consuming. And many students expressed a preference for continuing to develop their own voices through writing. Our experience in engaging AI led to the creation of the DEER praxis, which emphasizes defined engagements with AI tools for specific purposes, and generous use of reflection.

Research approaches that emphasize embodied practice and value the idiosyncratic uptake of writing technologies should be central to how writing researchers process the early moment of generative AI's availability to public audiences. Based on a qualitative analysis of 35 publicly available videos depicting the use of ChatGPT and Bing, the study offers a framework of descriptive codes that identify practices early adopters enact when integrating these technologies into research writing processes. The research contributes three key categories of practice that describe research writers’ interaction with generative AI across research design, writing research genres, and proofreading and editing: requesting, evaluating, and refining. This study is significant for providing an early descriptive analysis of the uptake of ChatGPT in research writing, while also identifying how disparate uses of generative AI technologies emerge from conflicting beliefs about writing, research, and invention. In particular, the study describes how experts in writing and research portray uses of and attitudes toward these technologies that often differ from students who are learning to research and write in their respective fields.

Ethical frameworks for text generators (TGs) in education are generally concerned with personalized instruction, a dependency on data, biases in training data, academic integrity, and lack of creativity from students. While broad-level, institutional guidelines provide value in understanding the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI) for the classroom, there is a need for a more ecological understanding of how AI ethics might be constructed locally, one that takes into account the negotiation of AI between teacher and student. This article investigates how an educational ethical framework for AI use emerges through a qualitative case study of one composition student's interaction with and understanding of using ChatGPT as a type of writing partner. Analysis of interview data and student logs uncover what we term an emergent “local ethic” – a framework that is capable of exploring unique ethical considerations, values, and norms that develop at the most foundational unit of higher education – the individual classroom. Our framework is meant to provide a heuristic for other writing teacher-scholars as they interrogate issues related to pedagogy, student criticality, agency, reliability, and access within the context of powerful AI systems.