Writing in Geography: Student Attitudes and Assessment

Abstract

This paper presents the results of two independent studies that assessed the impact of writing as a learning tool in introductory-level geography courses. Student attitudes toward writing and their performance on exams were analyzed to determine the impact of writing for comprehension and application of geographical concepts. Student perceptions were mostly positive; however, there was no significant improvement in grades. As both students and instructors view writing as valuable for learning, these results underscore the need to develop alternative methods of assessment and additional studies to quantitatively determine the impact of writing on learning.

Keywords:

• Writing-to-learn
• student perceptions
• assessment
• student learning

Notes

¹ Seshachari did not use any statistical tests to determine the significance of the grade differences between the courses in which she used the writing intervention and courses in which she did not use the writing intervention.

² Fisher's exact test is a statistical significance test that is used with two nominal values. The Fisher's exact test was determined to be appropriate in this situation due to the small sample size with low expected values. “Fisher's exact test is more accurate than the chi-squared test or G-test of independence when the expected numbers are small” (McDonald, 2009, pp. 70–75).