GoogleDocs and the development of thinking and wriitng

One of our school curriculum goals over the past three years has been the development of staff skills in the use of critical literacies (including deeper thinking and analysis, critical questioning, and writing) with the aim of improving NCEA performances. My subject area is economics. In my classes I have been working to develop tools that promote a better standard of analysis and writing from students.

My approach has encompassed three strategies:

1. Creating a writing scaffold based upon best advice from my English teaching colleagues on how to structure a paragraph, using the S.E.X.  (Statement, Explanation, eXample) framework
2. Applying the SOLO framework to enhance the quality of student thinking and analysis.
3. The use of GoogleDocs as the writing tool.
4. Providing improved feedback to students (according to Hattie, feedback has a high effect size in terms of its impact on learning ("Visible learning for teachers: Maximising impact on learning", John Hattie, P255) ).

As the three external economics standards at Level 2 now count for UE literacy, it seemed natural that good writing should be an imperative of the development of thinking in economics.

Philosophically, I believe that NCEA as an assessment framework is fundamentally about thinking (which is not to say that every subject area has got that right with every standard). I also believe that thinking cannot take place in the absence of knowledge (although I was challenged in this idea at the recent Edutech conference. Is it 'knowledge' of 'knowing' that is the new imperative?). So the development of students' ability to reason within the knowledge framework of economics seems to me to be my 'main game'.

Research suggests that we write more when we write electronically, and we write better (for and example of the research see "Meta-analysis: Writing with computers 1992-2002", Goldberg, Russell and Cook, December 2002).

Many of my colleagues and I had noted the minimalist imperative that has pervaded teenage boys' writing. In addition my own hand writing has always been at best deplorable, and so when marking their work my feedback was both minimal in volume, and at best difficult to read. I therefore felt that if I could get boys writing electronically I was likely to see better writing from them. I also believed that I was more likely to give them more effective feedback, feedback that they could tread and act upon.

My first step was to set up an electronic task structure that used the SOLO framework. I created a series of appropriate questions that evolved through the year as students built their base knowledge. These were physically structured into a table format.

These questions were set up in a master document that I created in GoogleDocs. The table allowed students to structure their answer using our paragraph structure, and also provided a dedicated space in which I could write feedback.

As the subject of economics is a 'high user' of graphical models (and the GoogleDocs draw tools are not yet as sophisticated as I would like) I provided a series of diagram/model templates that students could use. They are required to copy/paste the appropriate template into their answer, and then reference it in their writing.

The tasks are then arranged in course order, with headings that are set into a table of contents at the start of the document. The document also starts off with a simple reminder of how the SOLO framework works, and an exemplar on how it is used.

Finally I shared the document with all students in my classes using the Hapara 'Teacher Dashboard'.

The results have been very positive. Boys write more, and they write more effectively/coherently.

Here is a snapshot of some writing:

I also give more and better feedback, much more akin to 'coaching' (in the spirit of best practice with formative assessment there are no grades allocated for this work):

Conclusions:

1. Student thinking and writing has improved.
2. The quality and quantity of my feedback has improved.
3. Overall NCEA grades have improved
4. Student engagement in their writing seems to have improved (I have NO empirical evidence to support this by the way, simply that age old, but much over rated, teacher 'feeling').
5. I have no means of determining whether the use of GoogleDocs has been the major contributor or not.

Overall however, in the absence of valid replicable research data, I would still find it hard to abandon this tool as an effective means of developing improved student thinking and writing.