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University of San Francisco

Pictorial Map Effects on Learning How to Summarize

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>Inadvertent plagiarism among college students is caused by misunderstanding the rules and expectations about how to summarize source passages. Visual instruction in the form of a pictorial map is one way to address this problem and to teach students how to properly restate source text. Sixty-six college students from two universities participated in a quasi-experimental study in which an experimental group used a pictorial map instructional strategy and a control group used an underline/circle text instructional strategy to write summaries. The results showed that students in the pictorial map group wrote significantly better quality summaries for both high-interest politics passages and low-interest ballet passages. The findings were interpreted as support for a new hybrid visual strategy that uses journalism questions, images, linking lines, and partially blank labels to help students comprehend text and restate the main ideas in their own words and writing style. This study contributed to the learning and instruction literature by providing empirical evidence that a visual (pictorial map) tutorial was more effective than a verbal (underline/circle text) tutorial for summarizing paragraph-length passages.</p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Learning and Instruction
Year dc:date.available
2011

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • DeSoiza, Richard Anthony
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Mathew Mitchell
  • Xornam Apedoe
  • Philip Hanson

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://repository.usfca.edu/diss/21
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:repository.usfca.edu:diss-1020

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of San Francisco
Base URL
repository.usfca.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

DeSoiza, Richard Anthony. Pictorial Map Effects on Learning How to Summarize. Dissertation thesis, 2011. https://repository.usfca.edu/diss/21