Effects of Hand‐Drawn and Computer‐Generated Concept Mapping on the Expository Writing of Middle School Students with Learning Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two forms of concept mapping, hand‐drawn and computer‐generated, on the descriptive essay writing of middle‐level students with learning disabilities. Twelve eighth‐grade students composed descriptive essays under three conditions: no‐map support, hand‐map support, and computer‐map support. The essays were compared on four measures: number of words, syntactic maturity, number of T‐units, and holistic writing scores. Writing attitude was also examined. Results showed that student descriptive essays produced in the hand‐ and computer‐mapping conditions demonstrated significant increases above baseline writing samples on number of words, number of T‐units, and holistic writing scores. Carry‐over effects were observed in the no‐mapping condition and provide an indication that students may have acquired writing skills that generalized into their essay writing when not using maps. Results showed that students’ attitudes toward writing were significantly more positive in the computer‐mapping condition when compared to no‐mapping and hand‐mapping conditions.