during the 1970s
and 1980s. James A. Kulik’s comprehensive meta-analytic review of
instructional
technology studies from the 1970s and 1980s cited only five studies of computer
enrichment—out of a
total of 96 evaluation studies at the elementary and secondary school level
(J. Kulik, 1994).
The enrichment programs of this period provided students with relatively
unstructured
exercises of various types, including games, simulations, tutoring, and so on.
The
purpose of the
exercises was to enrich the classroom experience and stimulate and motivate
students.
The studies
measured the effect of enrichment on tests of reading or mathematics or both.
In three of the
five studies, student test scores were lower in the group that worked in the
enriched
environment. The
median effect of computer enrichment in the five studies was to decrease
posttest scores by
0.14 standard deviations. An effect size of –0.14 is equivalent to a drop in
test
scores from the 50th to the 44th percentile. These results may be of limited
relevance to today’s
programs of
computer enrichment, however, because the computer-rich environments of the
1970s and 1980s did
not include many of the resources available today, including World Wide
Web resources,
e-mail, and laptop computers.
During the 1990s
investigators turned their attention to effects of computer enrichment on
student writing.
Results of six studies of enrichment and writing appear in Table 9. In five of
the
six studies, the
effect of computer enrichment on the quality of student writing was positive.
In
the remaining
study, computer enrichment had a small but statistically significant negative
effect
on student writing.
Gardner, Morrison,
and Jarman’s study (1993) reported the clearest positive effects of
computer enrichment
on student writing. Their study assessed the effects of laptop use on student
writing, as well as
on mathematics and science, in elementary and secondary schools in Northern
Ireland.
Experimental subjects were 145 students from five classes in five schools, four
secondary-level
schools and one primary school. Each of the students in these classes received
a
personal portable
computer for a whole school year. These five classes were matched to five
similar classes in
which pupils did not have laptop access. The 130 students in these classes
served as the
control subjects. The investigators measured the writing performance of the
experimental and
control groups both before and after the treatment period by providing students
with the opening
sentences of a story and asking them to complete the story in up to 50 minutes.
The investigators
used both atomistic and holistic scales to rate writing quality. The
experimental
group received the
higher ratings. On the average comparison, the effect size was 0.66 for the
secondary-level
students and 0.27 for the primary students.
Another study with
clear positive results is Follansbee et al’s (1997) investigation of
effects of Internet
assignments on student learning. The experimental and control populations
were fourth and
sixth grade classes in seven urban school districts across the United States.
Students in the 14
experimental classes had on-line access to the Internet. Students in the 14
control classes
used traditional methods including computers but had no access to on-line
resources. All
students worked for 6 to 8 weeks on a project-based unit on civil rights. When
the
student projects
were complete, the investigators asked an independent evaluator to rate a
sample
of the projects
completed by the students receiving the experiment and control treatments. The
evaluator rated 66
experimental and 38 control projects on nine factors (e.g., effectiveness of
the
presentation,
completeness, organization). Experimental projects received the better ratings.
Median effect size
was 0.36.
Nix’s study (1998)
also reported clear positive results. Nix investigated effects of regular
use of an e-mail
system on the writing skills of fourth graders. Subjects for the study came
from
two Texas schools
that were similar in demographic and academic characteristics. Students in the
experimental school
exchanged e-mail with students at another school for the last three months of
the school year.
Students in the comparison school did not engage in e-mail exchanges. Nix
compared
improvement in handwritten essays from the two schools during the three-month
treatment period.
She found greater overall improvement in writing in the experimental group.
This improvement
was clear both with holistic scoring of essays (effect size = 0.40) and with
scoring of essays
using prespecified rating categories (effect size = 0.30).
Owston and Wideman’s
study (1997) is important because it is a long-term study.
Owston and Wideman
examined student writing during a three-year period, beginning in Grade 3,
at a school where
students had routine daily access to word processors. They compared writing
of the 52 third
graders at this school with writing of 58 third graders at a nearby comparison
school that had
only a few, infrequently used computers in its classrooms. Both schools were
located in a
suburban area on the outskirts of a major Canadian city. Analyses revealed that
writing quality
improved significantly more in the high-computer-access school during the three
years of the study.
The improvement in writing quality was clear on holistic measures of content
and meaning (effect
size = 0.33) and on measures of technical skill in communication (effect size
= 0.33).
Although positive,
the results of Stone’s study (1999) are weaker than the results of other
studies with
favorable findings. Stone investigated the effect of using guided Internet
writing
activities upon the
writing of second grade children. Fifty-six students from two elementary
schools in
Massachusetts were the subjects in the study. The 28 students in the
experimental
group followed a
step-by-step guide with a parent at home. The guide presented Internet-based
writing activities.
The students completed two activities per week for eight weeks; each activity
required 25 minutes
or more for completion. The 28 students in the control group did not use the
guide. The study
coordinator administered a pretest writing activity at the start of the
investigation and a
postwriting activity at the conclusion of eight weeks. Although the difference
in writing
improvement for experimental and control groups was not statistically
significant,
gains were somewhat
greater for the experimental group (effect size = 0.28).
Schieber’s study
(1999) found that computer enrichment had a small negative effect on
the quality of
student writing. Twenty-four classrooms in Washington State were involved in
the
study. Students in
nine of the classrooms (199 students) used laptop computers in instruction and
homework for the
school year. Students in the other 15 classrooms (278 students) were taught
the same
curriculum, but the students did not own laptops or use them regularly for
their
schoolwork.
Scheiber compared writing samples from laptop and nonlaptop classrooms after
two
years of laptop
instruction. The writing scores were similar in the two groups (effect size =
-0.10).
Overall, these six
studies represent a variety of approaches to computer enrichment. The
six studies include
investigations of both anytime-anywhere laptop programs and programs of
extended Internet
access. The common denominator of the six studies was their shared goal of
improving writing
skills by increasing student access to computer resources. The results of the
six studies suggest
that computer enrichment programs have the desired effect. In five of the six
studies, computer
enrichment had small positive effects on student writing. Effect sizes in the
five studies were
between 0.28 and 0.46. In the remaining study, computer enrichment had a
small and
statistically significant negative effect on student writing. Effect size in
this study was
–0.10. The median
effect size of computer enrichment programs in the six studies was 0.34.
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