Reading and Writing From Multiple Documents on Tablets

• In Event: Synergy of Reading and Writing Within Multiple Source Tasks: Novel Approaches and Innovative Techniques

Abstract

Objective
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an innovative multiple document reading application for tablets on students’ writing from multiple documents.

Theoretical Framework
Reading applications may facilitate working with multiple documents by providing specific functions for accessing documents and for organizing and integrating document information (Rouet & Britt, 2011). We tested the effects of one such application, LiquidText®, on students’ writing from multiple documents when using an iPad Pro® tablet. Additionally, we investigated whether strategy guidance would influence the effectiveness and efficiency with which students used this application during the multiple document task. The strategy guidance built on the Select-Organize-Integrate information-processing model (Mayer, 1996), highlighting the processes of selecting relevant information, organizing the selected information, and building a coherent mental representation that can be stored in long-term memory.

Method
Undergraduates (n=88) were randomly assigned to three conditions using the LiquidText and a control condition using Adobe Reader®. Participants worked with five documents on the socio-scientific issue of sun exposure and health on an iPad Pro and afterwards wrote an explanatory essay about that issue. The essays were scored for how well participants represented the claims, reasons, and evidence provided across the documents. The time used for processing the documents and for writing were recorded. In the LiquidText Guidance condition, participants were guided to (a) highlight information within documents that were simultaneously accessed, (b) select and extract task-relevant information based on highlighting, and (c) conceptually and spatially organize and integrate information across documents—processes afforded and supported by LiquidText. In the other two LiquidText conditions, participants used the application without guidance.

Results
Results based on between-subjects ANOVAs showed that participants in the LiquidText Guidance condition integrated the claims, reasons, and evidence from the various documents significantly more than participants in the two other LiquidText conditions and the control condition. There were no differences found among the other three conditions. Moreover, participants in the LiquidText Guidance condition took the longest time studying the documents and the shortest time creating their written products, with especially large differences observed between this treatment condition and the control condition.

Significance
We extended prior research by investigating relations between reading and writing when students used tablets to perform a multiple document task. Only students guided in using the application wrote better explanations than controls. Thus, simply providing students with an innovative application was not sufficient. Rather, explicit guidance in selection, organization, and integration processes essential to meaningful learning from and with multiple documents was required (Mayer, 1996; Rouet & Britt, 2011). Students guided in using this innovative application also displayed a more expert-like distribution of their time across processing the documents and in creating the written products. Consistent with previous portraits of efficient problem solvers (Glaser & Chi, 1988), these students seemed to spend proportionally more time on planning, analysis, and mental model construction and proportionally less time on responding to the task assignment.

Authors

• Ivar Braten, University of Oslo

• Jordan Lombard

• Cécile Van de Leemput

• Franck Amadieu, University of Toulouse