Drawing is Integrating: An Examination of Students’ Graphic Representations of Multiple Texts

In this study, integration, or students’ connection formation across texts, was examined across two tasks: when undergraduates were asked to complete a writing assignment and a novel, diagram construction task. While the writing assignment asked students to compose an argument based on multiple texts, the diagram construction task asked students to visually represent a set of eight conflicting texts and the relations among them. The Documents Model Framework (DM) was used to code undergraduates’ written responses and diagrams for the type of multiple text representations they featured (i.e., mush models, separate representations models, and documents models of multiple texts). Moreover, written responses and diagrams were coded for the specificity at which they integrated texts, corresponding to the formation of evidentiary, thematic, and contextual relations. Limited associations were found between college students’ written responses and the diagrams constructed. Implications for understanding multiple text integration are discussed.