Annotated Bibliography

The annotated bibliography fully breaks down each source as evaluations to further document your background information. 

Burkart, Gina. "First-Year College Student Beliefs about Writing Embedded in

Online Discourse: An Analysis and Its Implications for Literacy Learning." ProQuest LLC (2010). ERIC. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.

This source basically speaks on the general effects of how technology is becoming increasingly important to all aspects of life and how it is transitioning over to modern teaching methods. Also the source writer describes on how communication is becoming a known factor that is linked success. The author then creates a study where she analyzes college freshmen’s writing over their first semester and how they communicate and react with an online discussion board with their peers. The author then finds the results to be how this online peers board betters the students individually and they become socially more able and open to new ideas. This source could prove valuable to my issue because it has to do with the beneficial effects of using technology along with writing courses. The author seems reliable due to her credibility being that she’s a professor from the University of Northern Iowa. Also this is an online web document and the author seems pretty un-biased, just that they wanted to prove a point. Overall, the author is simply arguing that online discussion boards should be implemented in the future and her reasoning is because not only do they assist teachers, but students can easily share their ideas with peers and communicate with their classmates at all times online.

Indiana University, National Survey of Student Engagement. "Promoting Engagement

For All Students: The Imperative To Look Within. 2008 Results." National Survey Of Student Engagement (2008): ERIC. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.

Overall, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) decides to document and provide academic help to institutions across the nation, so they conduct a survey with a sampling of all college freshmen and they are based on their emotions and writing skills and their writing courses. The NSSE divided their results into three parts and the first reported that all institutions are basically the same based on students’ responses; the second reported that many students felt and were underprepared for their college courses; and the third had to report about how students think during writing courses and basically about their writing processes. This source would exemplify importance in my studies by showing students’ thought processes and it would also add to the argument of how students are underprepared for the rigorous challenges of college.  Also, this source is completely reliable due to it being created by the National Survey of Student Engagement. Therefore the NSSE are a government-funded program made towards helping post-secondary institutions. This source is actually a research report and the author’s central cause is to simply provide information to college institutions across the nation. The author has no bias because they aim to provide academic help to strengthen our modern teaching methods.

Rendahl, Merry A. "Moving First-Year Writing Online: Applying Social Cognitive

Theory To An Exploration Of Student Study Habits And Interactions." Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities And Social Sciences 71.7 (2011): 2396. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.           

In this thesis located within an academic journal, the author Merry Rendahl summons the question of “What do students in an online first-year writing course perceive as good study habits?” The author dug this question up by looking at previous scholarly arguments based around the introduction of online learning and the under-preparedness first-year college students portray by results. Gathering data by surveys, interviews, course management statistics, and students’ interactions, the author focused and broke down his results into two sections. The author revolved his data around the development of the students and their communication skills. However, two of the four students reported that the online course did not help or stimulate them in any way, and in contrast the other two felt improved in their writing abilities and they became more social. Overall, this thesis seems helpful because it adds new theories and ideas that I can discuss in my personal argument. This paper adds the social constructivist theories, which emphasize online interaction to promote expanded knowledge. The social cognitive theory is also thrown in to contradict the constructivists, to explain the possible reason for the other two student’s negative feedback. This source seems to be credible due to the writer being a doctor from the University of Minnesota and she is featured in an academic journal. Also, there seems to be no bias apparent, the author simply wants to find out both sides of this popular argument.

Yeh, Yuli, Hsien-Chin Liou, and Yi-Hsin Li. "Online Synonym Materials And

Concordancing For EFL College Writing." Computer Assisted Language Learning 20.2 (2007): 131-152. ERIC. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.

This source takes into account the foreign first-year college students and has to do with English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing. The authors picked up on the grammatically disastrous phenomenon of over-used adjectives used by non-native speaking learners (NNS). What the authors did was create 5 units of online course work for a sample group of NNS’s and they were specified for popular and over-used adjectives: “important”, “beautiful”, “hard”, “deep”, and “big”. The data program’s name was TANGO and for the first step of the process, the learners had to identify from a set of words, which synonyms matched with their unit. After this, the learners were given a three-part assessment to measure their newfound knowledge, being administered by nineteen English majors. Months after the experiment, the authors found that the students retained their synonyms their learning skills improved and their vocab had increased. Also, many of the students found the program to be beneficial, despite the rigorous content of the program. Despite this being primary data, I am not so sure if this source is hundred percent credible, but it seems legit to me. However, it says it has been peer reviewed and it is placed in an academic article as research. Also, the author is simply arguing that non-natives’ grammar can be improved with the help of online modules. It also seems the authors are of Asian background, so my topic could apply to other continents or ethnicities as well.

Ruefman, Daniel Lee. "Examining the Influence of Multimodal New Media Texts and

Technologies on First-Year Writing Pedagogies: A Cross Sectional Case Study." ProQuest LLC (2010). ERIC. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

Within this source, the authors consist of a group of professors, holding a doctorates degree, from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. What the authors researched was into recent years of gossip, mentioning how multimodal technologies have been used to change how traditional teaching is being administered. However, critics attack this idea by saying that online writing systems cannot properly teach the school of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and organization. Therefore, this group of doctors conducted a project where they analyze three types of writing classrooms: traditional, computer-oriented, and an online system. From here they measured the students course work and improvements and they were asked how they felt about each system of learning. Anyhow, the authors seem quite credible due to having a doctorates degree and working from a post-secondary institution. It could also be noted that this paper was not peer reviewed, showing that it could potentially be scholarly. Plus this source would help add to my paper because the authors take into account three types of classrooms to fully analyze and correctly compare and contrast between different forms of teaching. Also, the central argument of this thesis is to address and distinguish the differences between the top three practical ways of our modern teaching.

Paquette, Paige Fuller. "Virtual Academic Community: Online Education Instructors'

Social Presence in Association with Freshman Composition Students' Critical Thinking and Argumentation." ProQuest LLC (2009). ERIC. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

This source is based on the notion from a doctor from Auburn University and the basic topic surrounding this thesis is how literature is a rising challenge that thousands of first-year students must face, however they are both – not fully prepared and lack critical thinking skills to develop a complete argument. It is said that students develop their intellectual growth as they are encourage to think and write, but not too far beyond their present abilities. Then this is tied into how critical thinking skills could be developed within online writing courses and the authors write how teachers would have to alter their methods to open newer opportunities for students to learn besides the traditional way. Previous researchers also noted that there is a relationship between critical thinking and social presence (Tu & McIsaac, 2002). This gave way to the idea of online learning also improving students’ communication skills. So to test this theory out, the authors conducted a study where the would train four teachers to administer the social presence technique along with their guidelines. The results received portrayed that implementing social presence with the course work would only be incidental if test scores rose up after. This source seems quite credible and there could possibly be a slight bias within this source, leaning towards in favor of online learning because it yielded results before commonly and the author repeatedly speaks in favor of critical thinking being linked to online modules.

Monk, Susan V. "Project Vision: An On-Line Learning Initiative For College

Freshmen." (1996): ERIC. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

Within this source, the author writes on about Project Vision, undertaken by Pennsylvania State University, which explores the idea of online interactive systems being used to improve students’ literacy. Project Vision is encompassed around the idea fostered that communication and technology lead to newer brain pathways. This project was split into three small groups with students, a librarian, and a few faculty members, to keep them isolated but still feel like it was a learning environment. Then each campus was given the opportunity to choose which courses they wanted to develop in. Along with this, students were provided with 24/7 Internet access and had an infrastructure, which promoted communication amongst the students’ peers. Besides its framework, students were practically forced to work into groups and at the end of the project each group presented their research work, dependent on their topic, and all of the information was shared between groups smoothly. However, there were complaints of few students not holding their weight, but this can happen whether in traditional schooling or in online group modules. Overall, I cannot be so sure if this source is full-proof credible due to there being not much credentials stated in the paper and all I know is simply the author’s name. Nevertheless, this source would be a great resource to add onto the others, which hold the constructivist theory and feel communication is linked to scholarly success.

Meliha Handzic, et al. "Do ICT Competences Support Educational Attainment At

University?." Journal Of Information Technology Education 11.(2012): 1-25. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

This article was written up by Kurt de Wit, Dirk Heerwegh, and Jeffrey C. Verhoeven; and their surface issue was if information and communications technology (ICT) could influence first-year college students’ capability of educational attainment in any manner. The authors also created a research project to produce primary sample data, and they based their results on educational attainment. They prescribed “educational attainment” was measured in terms of any student’s persistence of study choice, study efficiency, and their grade point average (GPA). It was also noted that this project showed an improvement of the subject’s social contact and maintenance, however contrary to the authors’ expectations, educational attainment had little to no effect on writing literacy and ICT skills do not provide better attainment. The researchers also found that attainment involves a variety of factors, making it hard to truly account for: including age, gender, parent’s occupation class, educational qualifications, ethnicity, and more (Scherger and Savage, 2010). However, it was undeniably admitted that basic ICT skills are required for most professions or majors. For example, a student in the college of sciences would differ with a student in the college of philosophy based on ICT skills because of a higher demand of more advanced skills on a computer.

The central argument, however, was for the authors to strike down the idea of basic ICT skills being essential for improvement of educational attainment, or requiring technology to advance one’s academic literacy. Even though it was noted that ICT competences influence inter-communication amongst students with students, or students with instructors (Nelson Laird and Kuh, 2005). Still, it was constantly said throughout this article how technology did not enhance one’s literacy but only one’s communication skills. So it seems the author is trying to strike down the popular idea of how technology should be incorporated majorly into today’s teaching practices. They also added onto the argument of how ICT has nothing to do with academic attainment and how it adds onto values such as family income, school urbanity, and environmental peers. The authors even wrote how “higher incomes result to higher SAT scores” (St. John and GID. Musoba, 2011). Also, their underlying issue could possibly be that the authors feel that modern learning should stay how it is and technology should not be so revered with teaching due to its little impact on students.

Mongillo, Geraldine1, and Hilary Wilder. "An Examination Of At-Risk College

Freshmen's Expository Literacy Skills Using Interactive Online Writing Activities." Journal Of College Reading & Learning 42.2 (2012): 27-50. Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

In this source, Wilder and Mongillo created a research project where they gathered samples of first-year college students from a variety of diverse universities and entered them in online writing labs and tested their literacy before and after. These two developed this project for the subjects’ goal to use descriptive skills to portray certain objects and have their peers try to guess them from the writing. Based on the results, the data qualifies that interactive online writing activities improve literacy skills. This data would be strengthened due to the fact that students must focus on who their main audience is and properly manipulate their word choice to appeal to their appropriate audience. It has also been reported as a theory that learning is enhanced in “social contexts” or environments (Vygotsky, 1978). Along with the project improving literacy skills, Wilder and Mongillo reported that online learning labs improve the use of social communication because of students having to spread and interpret data to their peers, also leading to improved awareness and adapting previous information to add onto their own arguments. It was also noted that about 36.2% of students going to American universities require at least one developmental course due to lack of readiness; as well as 48% not meeting the reading college readiness level (ACT 2010). Another piece of support was that many students, across America, that are disinterested in school-based literacy, they perform quite proficiently as users of technology – forcing them to become problem solvers and thinkers (Anstey & Bull, 2006).

However, I felt the author’s true argument was that American students are not college ready and that they feel online learning labs would better prepare first-year students rather than school-based teaching. I have written all of the support in the previous paragraph for this claim and the authors constantly spit out information that give a negative connotation to how students are presently prepared. Like it was mentioned that that due to the lack of preparation for first-year students, the government is hit with an extra $3.7 billion per year (Wise, 2009). The unarticulated belief seems to be that traditional teaching is not good enough to prepare students for college institutions.

            The author’s purpose in conducting and creating this experiment and article was to propose primary data to prove that online learning labs are more efficient than modern learning practices. It seems that the author is well aware that there is still a certain percentage of students that are meeting college readiness criteria, however they feel there is a greater mass that are not cutting it, therefore they have raised this experiment as a possible solution.

Leese, Maggie. "Out Of Class--Out Of Mind? The Use Of A Virtual Learning

Environment To Encourage Student Engagement In Out Of Class Activities." British Journal Of Educational Technology 40.1 (2009): 70-77. ERIC. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

In the article of “Out of class—out of mind? The use of a virtual learning environment to encourage student engagement in out of class activities”, the subject of this article was to adapt modern learning and alter it to an online program called Wolverhampton Online Learning Framework (WOLF). This program brought a diversified student group and split them into three work groups to complete weekly assignments. These students were to meet up weekly and had face-to-face meetings, peer review sessions, and could e-mail a support team if help was needed. Also their assessments were the only item focused on with the weekly workload, so not to throw off students. Another focus was for the students to create presentations at the end of the weeks to peer-teach the other groups what they learned to spread the information, but in a way that their pupils could easily articulate. However, there was a more central, and hidden, claim within this article. It seemed that the author implicitly applied the fact that online learning was a better teaching method rather than in the classroom, and also to remove the use of teachers. This program was used to further improve students’ communication and includes a support system ran by a student body from the School of Education at the University of Wolverhampton. (Page 72; Lessie, Maggie; 2009). It was also quoted from page 73 of this article that, “Although this project was clearly linked to an increased use of technology, the pedagogical underpinning was much more about a move from teacher-led delivery to student-centred learning.” This explicitly portrays that the author is obviously trying to remove teachers and move to online modules to advance literacy. The author also cites and notes that students are more likely to work due to increased motivation with use of technology, as well as students becoming more responsible for their work assignments without any teacher nagging them about coursework (Page 73, Lessie, Maggie; 2009).  The author induced the Biggs (2003) method, which involves the 3P’s: The presage, the process, and the product. What this does is provide an equal chance to all of the test students, whether they have used online education modules or not. Also, the author seems to claim that this module is superior by the results, saying, ‘students commented more about the skills that they gained from the group work, including doing presentations and using technology.” Even though there were a few negative comments either based on the slow replies of the support team and lackadaisical peers in certain groups, the author clearly makes it believable for the WOLF, and other learning programs, to be superior. Overall, the author’s true argument is underlying beneath the surface argument, yet it still ties into my topic as one of the views that show technology as a learning resource and the effects it provides. And I can back up using technology as a positive and constructive tool with this source and also use the backfiring comments used from the students’ negative feedback about the program.