Emergent Bilinguals’ Response to and Assessment of an Online Writing Space and Its Instructional Content

• In Event: Extending and Evaluating a Theoretically Based, Online Intervention to Improve Latino Middle-Schoolers’ Writing

Abstract

The purpose of this poster is to report completed and ongoing analysis/findings regarding assessment of the STEPS interface based on feedback from the students with whom we work and tracking patterns in the system itself. Through interviews and surveys, we obtained student perceptions about the system’s design and ease of use and how curriculuar content is presented. A back-end database, which records all user actions in the system, permitted analysis of students’ navigation, note-taking and messaging patterns, writing at various drafts, and which resources they viewed most often. This multifaceted data collection has helped create a map of the STEPS system’s strengths and areas needing further development for Year Three.
Analysis of interview/survey data showed students responding positively to the interface design while also providing specific ideas for improvement. For example, they reported that the interface’s consistent layout helped them apply the STEPS+G heuristic to resources, notes, and essays. Additionally, Year One students’ suggestions about the note-taking space helped the STEPS team develop a redesigned feature for Year Two—making resources, student notes and essay drafts visible on a single screen. Students in Year Two reported that this capability helped them write their essays. Many thought the STEPS space should resemble more closely the social networking sites they use outside of school. A recurrent theme was students’ desire for the capability to customize their online workspace, e.g., changing the color scheme or their profile picture.
In terms of curricular content, some students reported that being able to review the anchor video as needed helped them make sense of new information as they progressed through modules. Most students thought that applying the STEPS+G elements to multimodal resources helped them take notes and make thematic connections in their essays.
To confirm student perceptions that overall, the STEPS space was easy for them to navigate, the STEPS system was programmed to automatically track users, logging their keystrokes and mouse clicks into the system’s database. This tracking begins each time a user logs-in to STEPS and is undetectable by end users. While more in-depth analysis of the tracking data is ongoing, initial self-reported general findings have been encouraging. We expect to see patterns of use emerge that will provide more detailed insights into how emergent bilinguals translanguage in a multimodal space, which resources help students connect best to curricular themes, and which prompts elicit written responses comprehensively incorporating the STEPS heuristic. Examining the STEPS dataset will also reveal how much time students spent keeping a particular resource on screen, how many times they viewed the anchor video, and which links they clicked on most often. Such data will help us discover the many ways students use the STEPS system. Findings will further the project’s instructional design aims in developing an online space most supportive for bilingual students and their academic writing needs in any language.
To help illustrate this, accompanying our poster will be a laptop demonstration of best design elements and screen capture of how students work and navigate through the STEPS space.

Authors

• Kristin Gorski, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Daniel L. Hoffman, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Allison Martin, BBC America

• Ibrahim (Musti) Ekin, NYSPhere International, Inc.