The development of a diagnostic-prescriptive tool for undergraduates seeking information for a social science/humanities assignment. III. Enabling devices

The present article is part III in a series of articles describing the development of a front-end software tool to be used by undergraduates accessing information from an electronic database for a social science/humanities term paper or research essay. Part I describes the theoretical framework for the tool. Part II outlines the prototype of the tool. In part III, the present article reports the results of a study of 60 undergraduates in a real-life situation where they had to write a term paper for a university-level remedial writing course. The purpose of the study was to test two devices, an uncertainty expansion device and an uncertainty reduction device. The uncertainty expansion device is designed to expand the uncertainty in the diagnostic situation by requiring the student to consider all possible angles, directions and arguments he or she might make in the essay/term paper. The uncertainty reduction device is designed to require the student to integrate information gathered for the term paper, The devices were found to improve the mean marks of the students who received interventions compared to classmates who did not participate in the study. The results also suggest that for optimal results each device should be administered at a different stage of the student's essay writing process. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.