Computer-Based Concept Mapping as a Prewriting Strategy for Middle School Students

The use of computer-based concept mapping as a prewriting strategy for eighthgrade language art students was compared to paper-and-pencil concept mapping. Computer-based concept mapping was shown to enhance idea generation and the total quality of the students’ prewriting concept maps in preparation for a persuasive writing task. Contrary to expectation, the students who generated paper-and-pencil concept maps scored better in persuasive writing according to the criteria contained in the state-authorized writing rubric than the students who generated computer-based concept maps. Persuasive writing is important for students because it empowers them in their professional, ethical, and political discourse, which is central to a free society (McCann, 1989). National assessments consistently indicate the majority of students across grades 4 thorough 12 are unable to produce an adequate persuasive essay and that they have more difficulty with persuasive writing tasks than with other kinds of writing (Applebee, Mullis, Latham, & Gentile, 1994). Persuasive writing is challenging for middle school students because it demands higher-level thinking skills and is more difficult to organize into a coherent argument (Brukhalter, 1995; Freedman & Pringle, 1984; Nippold, 2000). Prewriting has been shown to facilitate the writing process for all types of writing (Brodney, Revves, & Kazelskis, 1999; First & MacMillan, 1995; Hart, 1997). It is considered an important part of the writing process as it plays a vital role in the construction of writing and supports writers in setting goals, brainstorming, organizing ideas, and deciding text structure (Brodney et al., 1999; First & MacMillan, 1995; Flower & Hayes, 1981). Good writers recognize the importance of the prewriting, view it as rehearsal, and spend a longer time in planning during prewriting (Brodney et al., 1999; Hillocks, 1986). A lack of planning may result in poor writing performance (Bourdin & Fayol, 2000). Text organization patterns play an important role in writing (Sinatra, 2000; Wong, 1997). Concept mapping, or the creation of idealized graphic representations of text structure, can be used as a prewriting strategy for writing in the language arts classroom (Avery, Baker, & Gross, 1996; Novak & Gowin, 1984; Guastello, Beasley, & Sinatra, 2000; Sinatra, 2000). As a prewriting activity, concept mapping encourages students to "map out" their ideas prior to composing, and it allows students to translate ideas and concepts into a visual, graphical representation for writing assignments (Avery et al., 1996; Sinatra, 2000). In addition, concept mapping can be used to activate prior knowledge and to scaffold cognitive processing by assisting students to see relations among words, ideas, and categories (Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, 2002). Due to its fluency and organizing nature, it has been suggested that concept mapping is a natural tool for prewriting activities (Margerum-Leys, 1999). The actual process of making a map, however, is the greatest difficulty in integrating concept mapping into the language arts classroom as a prewriting strategy (Anderson-Inman & Zeitz, 1993). The process of constructing a concept map is time-consuming, tedious, and sometimes frustrating for students (Schau, Mattern, Zeilik, Teague, & Weber, 2001). Learning to map effectively requires training and experience. When using paper-and-pencil maps it can also be difficult to make revisions due to the complexity of constructing a concept map. It can be inconvenient for teachers to provide appropriate feedback to students during mapping and concept maps are frequently viewed by teachers as inefficient for evaluation (Chang, Sung, & Chen, 2001) because paper-andpencil maps are often perceived as untidy or disordered. Recently, there has been increasing recognition that computers can be used to facilitate the concept mapping process (Anderson-Inman & Zeitz, 1993; Anderson-Inman & Ditson, 1999). The increasing availability of computer technologies in schools means middle school language arts teachers now have the potential to integrate computer technologies into their prewriting instruction. Computer-based concept mapping may be a practical way to integrate concept mapping as a prewriting strategy into the middle school language arts classroom. First, it helps students generate ideas for writing tasks (AndersonInman & Horney, 1996; Ditson, Kessler, Anderson-Inman, & Mafit, 2001; Plotnick, 2001). Second, it helps students organize and reorganize their ideas about the topic before receiving further writing instruction (Anderson-Inman & Ditson, 1999). Moreover, electronic concept maps are easy to construct and revise. This approach also allows students (and instructors) to customize maps in ways that are not possible using paper-and-pencil. For instance, errors in describing an idea can be corrected and modified easily and quickly (AndersonInman, Ditson, & Ditson, 1998; Anderson-Inman & Zeitz, 1994). In addition, this approach allows the generation of ideas to be recorded rapidly in a highly legible format (Anderson-Inman et al., 1998; Ditson, et al., 2001). Hence, computerbased concept mapping has the potential to overcome most of the disadvantages of paper-and-pencil concept mapping. In addition, computer-based concept mapping may be particularly useful for persuasive writing tasks. First, computer-based concept mapping not only engages students in analyzing the text organization patterns about persuasive writing, but also engages them in critical thinking about the topic they are writing (Dabbagh, 2001; Jonassen, 1996; Jonassen, Carr, & Yueh, 1998). Second, it helps students visually organize their ideas and investigate relationships of the ideas during the prewriting phase (Blair, Ormsbee, & Brandes, 2002). It also encourages students to revise or change conceptual relationships in maps and makes easy the arrangement of ideas into a persuasive format (AndersonInman & Zeitz, 1993; Ditson et al., 2001) Although concept mapping has been investigated as a prewriting strategy, research in this area has been limited (Sturn & Rankin-Erickson, 2002, Zipprich, 1995). In addition, these studies have only focused on students with special needs. Furthermore, Sturm and Rankin-Erickson’s (2002) study is the only one investigating the effects of computer-based concept mapping on writing. In their study, Sturm and Rankin-Erickson found that concept mapping strategies improved the writing of students qualified for special education when using either computer-generated or hand-drawn concept mapping as a prewriting strategy. To date, however, the use of computer-based concept mapping as a prewriting strategy for regular middle school students in language arts classrooms has not been investigated. In addition, although concept mapping has been investigated as a prewriting strategy for both expository and narrative writing (Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, 2002, Zipprick, 1995), it has not been investigated as a tool for improving persuasive writing. Hence, research is needed to explore further the effects of concept mapping, particularly in a computer-based format, as a prewriting strategy for broader student populations and for its effects on different writing genres. The major purpose of the present investigation was to examine the effects of computer-based concept mapping as a prewriting strategy for middle school students’ persuasive writing in the language arts classroom. In addition, this study sought to examine whether there is a significant difference among students’ concept maps between computer-based and paper-and-pencil concept mapping conditions.