Research+Problem+Statement

**﻿ ﻿ Problem Statement** Learning to write has been considered to be a cornerstone of U.S. education. Writing is also acknowledged to be a skill that requires years of practice. It is a non-linear process that requires the writer to rethink, review, and revise throughout the writing experience. When learning to write sentences, paragraphs, and various genres, elementary students are learning to develop their ideas and express these ideas through writing. The new writers require time and guidance through the process. The stages in the writing process are defined as pre-writing/planning, writing, responding (to teacher, peer, or self evaluation), revising, editing, and publishing/sharing. Writing instruction guides the new writers back and forth among the steps in the process until the students are ready to share their writing with others. Today’s educators understand that students are part of the digital age. Instant messages, emails, texts on the telephone, abbreviating phrases, incorporating sound and images into messages are all now the norm. Writing using pencil and paper can seem to be unrelated to students' interests and methods of communication. At school writing instruction is also competing with instruction in reading and math. Student progress in these two subjects are evaluated in annual high stakes tests and reviewed for Adequate Yearly Progress as defined in the federal legislation No Child Left Behind. There is no time to add a topic, but there the potential to integrate digital storytelling into writing instruction. What is needed, however, is research that demonstrates an improvement in student writing once students have created their own digital stories. This study will explore the impact of student-created digital storytelling by third grade students on student writing. Samples of student writing will be collected before and after the digital storytelling project and evaluated using a state-wide writing rubric to measure changes in student performance. Students will also be observed for behaviors that indicate their levels of engagement in the three phases of classroom activitity: 1) writing the initial writing sample, 2) creating the digital story, and 3) writing another writing sample. Data will be collected and analyzed to answer the following research questions:


 * How does implementing the digital storytelling process impact a student’s understanding of the writing process?


 * Does student engagement increase when digital storytelling is used in writing instruction?


 * Which of the six traits of writing is most improved after the digital storytelling project?

By completing the data collection within a 9 week period, I hope to minimize some of the threats to internal validity that are inherent in qualitative research such as history, maturation, and testing. (Johnson & Christenson, p. 258)

Johnson, B. & Christensen, L. (2008). Educational research: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc. 