Purpose: With the advent of ChatGPT, a sophisticated generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, maintaining academic integrity in all educational settings has recently become a challenge for educators. This paper discusses a method and necessary strategies to confront this challenge. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, a language model…

This paper presents a multidimensional model of variation in writing quality, register, and genre in student essays, trained and tested via confirmatory factor analysis of 1.37 million essay submissions to ETS' digital writing service, Criterion®. The model was also validated with several other corpora, which indicated that it provides a…

This study compared the effects of worked example and scripting on students' argumentative peer feedback, essay and learning qualities. Participants were 80 BSc students who were randomly divided over 40 dyads and assigned to two experimental conditions (worked example and scripting). An online peer feedback environment named EduTech was designed…

Persuasive writing is one of the main writing genres secondary students are required to master. However, while the students can naturally argue verbally and in an informal setting, they lack the skill to compose a persuasive argument for academic purposes. The main problem is that students can barely construct an argument while composing a…

Visualizations may help students understand the network of connections among multiple documents. This study explored how ninth-grade students used a novel digital document mapping scaffold to construct models of multiple documents. We examined students' maps and mapping processes in order to understand how they used the scaffold to visually…

While there is growing awareness of the existence and activities of Academic Custom Writing websites, which form a small part of the contract cheating industry, how they work remains poorly understood. Very little research has been done on these sites, probably because it has been assumed that it is impossible to see behind their firewalls and…

The goal of this study is to model pauses extracted from writing keystroke logs as a way of characterizing the processes students use in essay composition. Low-level timing data were modeled, the interkey interval and its subtype, the intraword duration, thought to reflect processes associated with keyboarding skills and composition fluency.…

This program profile describes a restructure of the PhD exam intended to enhance graduate-level instruction and advisement within the Rhetoric and Composition program at Georgia State University. We explain how a mix of institutional constraints and mentorship opportunities drove revisions to our doctoral exams and processes of doctoral…

This paper presents an investigation of score prediction based on natural language processing for two targeted constructs within analytic text-based writing: 1) students' effective use of evidence and, 2) their organization of ideas and evidence in support of their claim. With the long-term goal of producing feedback for students and teachers, we…

The best way to teach students to write well-crafted essays, Gallagher claims, is to consider how people learn to do anything unfamiliar. They carefully examine someone who knows how to do that thing and then emulate that person's actions. Just so, if teachers want students to write persuasive arguments, interesting explanatory pieces, and…

This article presents an effective model for a manageable interdisciplinary project that shows students the connections among art, English, and other disciplines; gives composition students an external audience for their writing; and emphasizes the importance of research in the process of creating arguments and art. This interdisciplinary project…

The emphasis on improving writing instruction, especially the writing of non-narrative texts, may lead some teachers to seek effective ways to teach students. The IMSCI model, a scaffolded model for writing instruction, is useful for planning effective instruction. This article describes a research project conducted in a 4th grade classroom…

Social identity threat refers to the process through which an individual underperforms in some domain due to their concern with confirming a negative stereotype held about their group. Psychological research has identified this as one contributor to the underperformance and underrepresentation of women, Blacks, and Latinos in STEM fields. Over the…

Achieving sustained student engagement with practice in computer-based writing strategy training can be a challenge. One potential solution is to foster engagement by embedding practice in educational games; yet there is currently little research comparing the effectiveness of game-based practice versus more traditional forms of practice. In this…

Achieving sustained student engagement with practice in computer-based writing strategy training can be a challenge. One potential solution is to foster engagement by embedding practice in educational games; yet there is currently little research comparing the effectiveness of game-based practice versus more traditional forms of practice. In this…