Using online editing sessions does not affect student scores on standardized writing and reading exams, according to a forthcoming study in the journal Technology, Knowledge, and Learning.
Binbin Zheng, an assistant education professor at Michigan State University, and her co-authors examined more than 18,000 editing sessions of 3,537 writing samples. They were taken from 257 6th graders at a single middle school in suburban Colorado that used Google Docs for students to write papers and exchange feedback with their teachers and with one another during the 2011-12 academic year.
Researchers also compared students’ results on the 2010-11 Colorado Student Assessment Program reading and writing tests with their results in 2011-12. The researchers found no effects on student test scores from either the extent of feedback or revisions by the students and their teachers.
