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result(s) for
"Word processing in education."
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Influences on teacher practice related to the instructional use of the computer in the elementary school writing program
For over twenty years, educational leaders have encouraged teachers to incorporate the use of the computer into their instruction. Millions of dollars have been spent equipping schools with this technology. Nonetheless, a review of recent research literature indicated limited student use of this equipment. This research was motivated by a desire to learn more about those factors that influenced teachers' instructional use of these computers. Of the many possible instructional applications of the computer, this study focused on the student use of the word processor as a writing tool. Three elementary teachers were identified who were committed to extending computer access to their students while engaged in the writing process. Case studies, detailing data gathered through extensive interviewing and classroom observation, allowed the researcher to examine those factors that prompted and supported these teachers' efforts to extend student access to the computers during writing workshop. Impediments making it difficult for these teachers to facilitate the students' use of the computer were also investigated. While many factors combined to shape each teacher's practice, it was evident that a deep personal commitment to the use of the computer as a tool to support student learning was common to the teachers who were subjects of the three case studies. The children's enthusiastic response to the use of the word processor coupled with their writing success were also strong factors influencing these teachers' efforts to find ways to extend computer access to their students. The case studies demonstrated the application of computer software throughout all phases of the writing process with the students moving between the drafting, editing and rewriting phases in a recursive manner and with ease. A need for greater cohesiveness between mechanisms intended to support good writing instruction and those intended to assist teachers with the use of classroom computers was indicated. The study also found that an alignment of system and school priorities had a positive effect on teachers' efforts to incorporate student use of classroom computers.
Dissertation
Assessment tool for nursing student computer competencies
Computer skills have been established as important for nursing students and for graduate nurses. No current research was found on the best method to evaluate the skills of incoming nursing students. The purpose of this descriptive, correlational study was to compare student ratings of their computer competency to their performance of those skills on a computer-graded assessment. A convenience sample of 87 nursing students was used. There was a low, but significant correlation between the scores on the survey and the assessment. The results suggest that students rate themselves higher on their skills than their actual performance of computer skills. Implications for educators are presented, and the value of using a computer-graded assessment is discussed.
Journal Article
Melioration and the Transition from Touch-Typing Training to Everyday Use
Previous research shows that success in touch-typing training does not ensure its continuation into everyday use. It is postulated that an important contributor to this problem is melioration–that is, maximizing local rates of reinforcement. In the context of typing, melioration implies an intuitive tendency to choose typing strategies that lead to a better immediate performance level than that obtained by touch-typing. One such strategy is visually guided typing, in which the performer looks at the keys to locate their position. The present research describes a training approach that changes the reinforcement structure by increasing the attractiveness of looking at the screen while typing. This approach is implemented by using a secondary task that requires typists to respond to signals appearing on the screen. In an experiment that evaluated this solution, 22 students were given a touch-typing training course followed by a period in which they had to type their own homework. The results showed that under a modified reinforcement condition, the effect of melioration on touch-typing scores in the posttraining phase decreased. In addition, the experimental manipulation facilitated the acquisition and maintenance of the touch-typing skill. Actual or potential applications of this research include research in training, choice behavior, and human-computer interaction.
Journal Article
Between-word processing and text-level skills contributing to fluent reading of (non)word lists and text
Recent studies have shown that fluent reading of word lists requires additional skills beyond efficient recognition of individual words. This study examined the specific contribution of between-word processing (sequential processing efficiency, indexed by serial digit RAN) and subskills related to text-level processing (vocabulary and syntactic skills) to a wide range of reading fluency tasks, while accounting for within-word processes (i.e., those involved in phonological recoding, orthographic decoding, and sight word reading). The sample included 139 intermediate-level (Grade 3,
n
= 78) and more advanced (Grade 5,
n
= 61) readers of Dutch. Fluency measures included simple and complex lists of words and nonwords, and a complex text. Data were analyzed through hierarchical regressions and commonality analyses. The findings confirm the importance of between-word processing for fluent reading and extend evidence from simple word lists and texts to complex word lists and texts, and simple and complex lists of nonwords. The findings hold for both intermediate-level and more advanced readers and, as expected, the contribution of between-word processing increased with reading-skill level. Effects of vocabulary were generally absent, aside from a small effect on text reading fluency in Grade 3. No effects of syntactic skills were found, even in more advanced readers. The results support the idea that once efficient individual word recognition is in place, further fluency development is driven by more efficient between-word processing. The findings also confirm that vocabulary may be less prominent in processing mechanisms underlying fluent word identification in transparent orthographies, across reading levels.
Journal Article
Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas
Information about the affective meanings of words is used by researchers working on emotions and moods, word recognition and memory, and text-based sentiment analysis. Three components of emotions are traditionally distinguished: valence (the pleasantness of a stimulus), arousal (the intensity of emotion provoked by a stimulus), and dominance (the degree of control exerted by a stimulus). Thus far, nearly all research has been based on the ANEW norms collected by Bradley and Lang (
1999
) for 1,034 words. We extended that database to nearly 14,000 English lemmas, providing researchers with a much richer source of information, including gender, age, and educational differences in emotion norms. As an example of the new possibilities, we included stimuli from nearly all of the category norms (e.g., types of diseases, occupations, and taboo words) collected by Van Overschelde, Rawson, and Dunlosky (Journal of Memory and Language 50:289-335,
2004
), making it possible to include affect in studies of semantic memory.
Journal Article
Exploring the potential of using ChatGPT in physics education
The pretrained large language models have been widely tested for their performance on some challenging tasks including arithmetic, commonsense, and symbolic reasoning. Recently how to combine LLMs with prompting techniques has attracted lots of researchers to propose their models to automatically solve math word problems. However, most research works focus on solving math problems at the elementary school level and few works aim to solve problems in science disciplines, e.g., Physics. In this exploratory study, we discussed the potential pedagogical benefits of using ChatGPT in physics and demonstrated how to prompt ChatGPT in solving physics problems. The results suggest that ChatGPT is able to solve some physics calculation problems, explain solutions, and generate new exercises at a human level.
Journal Article
An experimental eye-tracking study of text adaptation for readers with dyslexia
Easy-to-read guidelines recommend visual support and lexical simplification to facilitate text processing, but few empirical studies confirm a positive effect from these recommendations in individuals with dyslexia. This study examined the influence of the visual support and lexical simplification on sentence processing through eye movements at both the text-and word-level, and the differences between readers with and without dyslexia. Furthermore, we explored the influence of reading experience and vocabulary, as control variables. We tested 20 young adults with dyslexia and 20 chronological age-matched controls. Participants read 60 sentences in total. Half the sentences contained an image and the other half did not, and half contained a low-frequency word and half a high-frequency word. Results showed that visual support and lexical simplification facilitated sentence processing, potentially by jointly facilitating lexical semantic access. We also found that participants with lower print exposure and lower vocabulary benefited more from word-level lexical simplification. We conclude that both adaptations could benefit readers with low print exposure and smaller vocabularies, and therefore, to many dyslexic readers who show these characteristics.
Journal Article