Effects of Focused Writing on Student Learning in a Foundational Communicative Sciences and Disorders Course

Abstract

The preliminary results of the study are somewhat inconclusive. The average quiz scores across the groups have increased overall since the beginning of the semester. This may demonstrate that any type of writing is beneficial for students to gain a deeper understanding of class content. The time may allow students to reflect on their previously learned information, even if the writing prompt doesn’t specifically address that content. One difference that we have seen was in Group One’s average test score which increased from test one to test two by 2.55 points. This was after Group One switched from the baseline phase to the treatment phase and it was the largest increase out of the three groups. This could show that even if the specific writing prompts did not have an immediate effect on Group One’s quiz scores it may have had a slightly delayed impact which reflected on the test scores. This may show that the specific writing prompts required deeper thought from the students that did not manifest until the exam. Overall, the daily writing prompts and quizzes seem to be helping students to gain understanding of class content as demonstrated by the generally increasing scores on quizzes and exams.