The Instructional Technology Doctoral Program invites the university community to Mila Fuller’s dissertation defense on Tuesday, November 12, 2013, at 10 a.m. in HH 110. The title of her defense is: Impact of Digital and Paper-Based Graphic Organizers on the Persuasive Writing Process for Fourth and Fifth Grade Students. Dissertation Committee members include: Dr. David Wizer (chair), Dr. Michael Hickey, Dr. Donald Knezek, and Dr. Scot McNary. All faculty and graduate students are welcome to attend.
For more information, contact Dr. Sadera at bsadera@towson.edu.
Dissertation Abstract: At present, graphic organizers, both paper-based and digital, have become recognized instructional tools to help support students as they write. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of paper-based and digital graphic organizers to improve persuasive writing of fourth and fifth grade students. A quasi-experimental study with a comparison design with pre-test and post-tests was used with the switching replication method. The population consists of sixty-seven public and private school students in fourth and fifth grade.
The most prominent results indicate that the use of a digital graphic organizer first, leads to significant improvements in the following five writing outcome areas: goal statement, reasoning statements, supporting arguments, conclusion statement, and overall score. Likewise, older students (aged 10-11) and female students also showed significant improvements in all five writing outcomes. The use of paper-based graphic organizers first, resulted in significant improvements in three areas: supporting arguments, conclusion statement, and overall score.
The overall results indicate that graphic organizers yield significant improvements in the persuasive writing of fourth and fifth grade students. Furthermore, a consistent finding throughout this study is that the use of (paper-based and digital) graphic organizers results in significant improvements in these three areas: supporting arguments, conclusion statement, and overall quality.
