Success in chemistry requires students to be able to understand, integrate, and communicate using multiple representations in a range of modes. Students find these processes challenging, particularly when they are required to move between macroscopic, sub-microscopic, and symbolic levels of representation in the context of laboratory inquiry. Researchers have indicated that providing students with appropriate writing-to-learn activities can support students’ knowledge construction and development of representational competence. Production of multimodal texts using digital technologies has the potential to enhance students’ abilities to create and combine multiple representations in response to laboratory inquiry. Digital technologies also support investigative inquiries into chemical phenomena using visualisation tools.
This paper describes the findings from a study that examined and compared the effects on students' representational competence of creating multimodal text using digital technologies, and writing a standard laboratory report, to report on laboratory investigations. The study employed mixed methods within a modified crossover design. The participants were the members of two mixed ability Year 11 chemistry classes (n = 22, n = 27) in a metropolitan public secondary school in Queensland, Australia. The study examined the learning outcomes for students who produced two different text types to report on laboratory-based investigative inquiries about biomaterials. In the first stage, both classes undertook the same bioplastics investigation, with one class reporting their findings by producing a multimodal text, or digital poster presentation, and the other writing a standard laboratory report. In the second stage, both classes conducted a biofuels investigation and reported their findings using the remaining text type. A range of digital technologies, including visualisation tools, were used to scaffold students’ text production. Student texts were analysed for the purpose, range, and type of representations used to provide sub-microscopic level explanations of macroscopic phenomena. Results indicated that using digital resources to produce text in which the amount of written representation is limited encouraged students to use other modes of representation to make sub-microscopic explanations of macroscopic phenomena. Findings from student interviews suggested that this process promoted deeper reflection on the meaning of data and the most appropriate ways in which to represent it, which in turn enhanced students' representational competence. The findings of this study support further investigation of writing-to-learn approaches that use multimodal texts and digital technologies to support learning in chemistry. The study has implications for inquiry learning and the use of writing-to-learn activities to enhance students’ understanding and representations of chemistry laboratory data on multiple levels.