A writing support tool for distance students

Abstract

This paper describes SuperText, a computer program designed to support productive expository writing processes among students at a distance teaching university. Being able to write well is an import communication skill, and the writing process can help to build and clarify the writer's knowledge. Computers can support this by providing a medium to externalise and record the writer's cognition. Appropriate representations for such externalisation are uninstantiated idea labels, instantiated text units, and a variety of relationships between these items. SuperText uses these representations to support a range of writing styles. It provides several independent 'Views' that represent the structure of the evolving document through expanding hierarchies, each with a variety of presentations. Allied to these Views is a text work space providing access to a database of continuous text nodes. Taken together, these provide an ability to represent global and intermediate structures of the document well beyond that of conventional editors. These aspects were all rated highly by students participating in a series of field trials of SuperText.