Improving students’ academic writing through video modeling: An intervention study

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of a video modeling intervention on the quality of undergraduate students’ summaries. Two video models were created, one with a focus on the process of writing a quality summary, and the other with a focus on the final product of a quality summary. The intervention was carried out as part of the curriculum in a General Education course, ascertaining high ecological validity. Participants (N = 137) were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (i.e., process- or product-oriented) and submitted a pretest and a posttest summary. A mixed ANOVA indicates that the quality of students’ summaries significantly improved from pre- to post-test but that there are no differential effects for the two conditions. Additionally, there are no differential effects of the intervention on writing quality for different genders or class standings. These findings suggest that a video modeling intervention is an effective instructional tool, which can easily be implemented in a course curriculum. unknown unknown