Supporting university students’ argumentative source-based writing

Argumentative writing from sources is a literacy practice that students commonly find challenging. The present article reports a descriptive study where students’ source-based writing in small groups was supported with either print-based or digital scaffolding. Students analyzed source texts given to them and used their analysis to compose a position paper on a controversial educational topic. Position papers were analyzed for depth and breadth of argumentation, stand and justifications, degree of transformation of source texts’ argumentation, and structure. The study suggests that students in both scaffolding groups were fairly capable of identifying relevant reasons representing various perspectives on the topic in source texts and using them to build an argument in their position papers. However, students seldom transformed the arguments by adding their own thoughts or connecting arguments across the texts. Further, quite a few students seem to struggle in structuring their essays: 41% of essays in the print-based scaffolding group and 24% of essays in the digital scaffolding group were unstructured. Instructional implications are discussed.