Revision Maps

It is necessary to obtain a chronological picture of the events during the course of collaborative writing in order to obtain a better understanding of how students develop their jointly authored document over a period of time. Revision maps summarise text edits made at the paragraph level throughout the writing process. Figure 8-2 depicts the revision map of a real document written by a group of students during the prototype experiment, which will be described in Section 8.6. Each column refers to a revision of the document. Each small rectangle represents a paragraph of the document. Each row shows the evolution of an individual paragraph, as it is created, altered, or deleted over a period of time.

Figure 8-2. Revision map of a real document written by a group of five students: c1, c2, c3,

Rectangles are colour made to the paragraph: green

means more words were deleted than added; and

paragraph. The intensity of these colours increases or decreases depending on the extent of their corresponding edits. If the number of words added is the same as the number of words deleted, the rectangle colour is yellow

bar under the row corresponding to author IDs indicates the aggregated

individual revisions; and the last vertical column represents the aggregated edits of individual paragraphs across all revisions.

Each paragraph evolution

(final) revision. This means that the paragraph evolution rows can move up and down over time, especially when a new paragraph is added. In addition, the paragraph evolutions are grouped into sections

document.

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. Revision map of a real document written by a group of five students: c1, c2, c3, c4, and c5. “ad” is the administrator.

Rectangles are colour-coded to designate the nature and the extent of the edits green indicates that more words were added than deleted; means more words were deleted than added; and white represents no change in the paragraph. The intensity of these colours increases or decreases depending on the extent of their corresponding edits. If the number of words added is the same as the number of words deleted, the rectangle colour is yellow-green. Lastly, the horizontal bar under the row corresponding to author IDs indicates the aggregated

and the last vertical column represents the aggregated edits of individual paragraphs across all revisions.

Each paragraph evolution is positioned relative to its position in the current (final) revision. This means that the paragraph evolution rows can move up and down over time, especially when a new paragraph is added. In addition, the paragraph evolutions are grouped into sections based on the structure of the

. Revision map of a real document written by a group of five students: c1, c2, c3,

coded to designate the nature and the extent of the edits indicates that more words were added than deleted; red esents no change in the paragraph. The intensity of these colours increases or decreases depending on the extent of their corresponding edits. If the number of words added is the same as the astly, the horizontal bar under the row corresponding to author IDs indicates the aggregated edits of and the last vertical column represents the aggregated edits of

is positioned relative to its position in the current (final) revision. This means that the paragraph evolution rows can move up and down over time, especially when a new paragraph is added. In addition, the based on the structure of the

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For instance, the revision map shown in Figure 8-2 represents the edits in a document written by a group of students over a period of six days (from 04 to 09/05/2011). The text edits of four paragraphs as indicated in the revision map -- P1, P2, P3 and P4 -- can be described as follows: Many words were added to the first paragraph of Section A (P1) by c1 on 04/05/2011 22:29; it was not edited until 06/05/2011 16:48 (by author c1), when more words were deleted than added to it. Towards the end of the week (on 08/05/2011 21:46), P1 was modified again by c1 when more words were added. The first paragraph of Section B (P2) was inserted on 05/05/2011 13:57 by author c2; it was not modified at all and was deleted altogether from the document on 09/05/2011 02:38 by c2. A new paragraph (P3) was inserted by c2 after P2 was removed. A paragraph can also be split and merged; for example, paragraph P4 was inserted on 05/05/2011 13:57 by c2, changed once by the addition of a few words on /05/2011 16:48 by c1, then split into two paragraphs on 09/05/2011 02:38 by c2.

The next subsection explains how to use the revision map depicted in Figure 8-2 to obtain further insight into how students collaboratively develop their document during the six days of writing.

Using the Revision Maps to Analyse Writing Process

Revision maps help provide answers to the following five questions:

1. Which sections of the document were worked on the most and which were worked on the least? (Location of text edits)

2. When (at what dates) did major edits (i.e. addition and deletion) occur during the writing process? (Time)

3. Did students work sequentially or in parallel? (sequential work consisting of single paragraphs written at different sessions or days; parallel work consisting of many paragraphs written almost simultaneously during the same writing sessions or days).

4. Who made the most or the least edits to the document? (Authorship)

5. How many authors worked on each paragraph and each section? (Collaboration)

Question 1 is easily answered by examining the vertical bar that represents the aggregated edits of individual paragraphs, which indicates that Section A of the document contains more edits than Section B. Answering Question 2 leads to the

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interesting observation that most text edits, especially additions, happen at the beginning of the process when students first engage in their writing tasks, while many text deletions occur towards the end of the writing process. There are a number of extensive text edits made exclusively by author c3 during the middle of the process. In answering Question 3, it is interesting to note that the work in Section A is performed sequentially, especially on the first three paragraphs by two students, c1 and c5. In contrast, paragraphs in Section B were created almost at the same time by student c2, although these particular Section B paragraphs are not found in the final revision, but are replaced at the final stage of the writing process.

The revision map also provides information about how students collaborate during the writing process, thus answering Questions 4 and 5. Of the five students, we discern that c4 has the least amount of involvement with the development of the document; that the work of c2 pertains mainly to Section B; and that a significant amount of collaboration is evident from c1 and c5 with regard to their document development.

Although Figure 8-2 indicates very little editing activity from c4 as compared to the work of the other four students, it is nevertheless difficult to conclude from this evidence that c4 contributes the least to the development of the document. There is no way of knowing whether small text editions made by c4 serve to increase the assignment of a topic, thus improving the clarity and the coherence of the text.

This initial analysis derived from revision maps serves to further understand some of the conditions and circumstances related to the creation of the students' jointly authored document at the paragraph level. We will now look at ways to investigate how the students develop their ideas throughout the course of the writing, with particular emphasis on the evolution of the topics over time.