Summary: Two experiments were conducted on 9th and 11th graders to test the hypothesis that hypertext writing is more beneficial than linear writing in terms of content knowledge acquisition and self-efficacy. The authors claim that using a hypertext format involves organizing information in a structured, hierarchical way and when students learn how to do this their writings (in the form of an argumentative way) will be of a higher quality.

This was a tough article to get through. In general I found the article and overall experiment to be quite confusing. Perhaps this is because I wasn’t sure what hypertext the researcher was referring to, and the statistics were unfamiliar to me as well. I also found myself wanting the authors to explain their hypothesis with further details. For example, how exactly would hypertext lead to students acquiring content knowledge and self-efficacy better?

In addition to questions about the claim and hypothesis, I also questioned the way the two experiments were conducted. It appears that there were two similar studies done and the authors decided to come together and create a research paper is a little troubling and very confusing to me. Perhaps the two could have examined their individual experiment first and then come together to create a new experiment on which they wrote their research paper on. In the paper two different grades were tested, a pretest was added, the topic for the argumentative was changed from charities, and the time limit and how the lessons were taught changed. The most confusing change was adding in observational learning with the 11th graders. They claimed that observational learning was effective in teaching students how to write hypertext. If this is true why was this claim and experiment only introduced to this second group of students?

There authors also stated that students who learn by observing writing tasks were more goal-oriented and better in the planning process than students who learned by performing writing tasks. The researchers did not offer any support for this claim and I disagree with it based off of my own experiences. Medea also posed another interesting question/contradiction (one that I didn’t consider but find that I’m inclined to agree with her about) in regards to the author’s methodology. The authors claim that hypertext writing is a complex practice but during their experiment the students received only a 20 minute instructional guide in how to perform this task. With my own educational experience, 20 minutes isn’t an appropriate or or adequate amount of time to allow students to learn a complex practice. The one beneficial thing I did find useful was when the authors offered a break down and discussion section to explain their findings. I also liked their suggestions for further research section. I think it would interesting to research the writing-to-learn and learning to-write processes that students perform during hypertext writing and linear writing. Then they could compare which process is more beneficial for students.