• Journal of Engineering Education Research
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.33-45
• /
• 2022

This study aims to investigate effects of scaffolding on writing apprehension and media literacy in engineering freshmen's synchronous online writing course, and the relationships between the two variables. 'Scaffolding' is in-time support provided by a teacher/tutor or competent peer that enables students to meaningfully gain skills at problem solving process. Also, it is one of the most frequently mentioned concepts in education as well as one of the more necessary teaching strategies in an online writing course. In this study, provided treatments for the experiment were supportive scaffolding for domain-specific knowledge and reflective scaffolding for meta-cognitive knowledge. Participants were 102 engineering undergraduate students, who were assigned to two experimental groups by scaffolding types. A process-based writing course in online learning environment was conducted for 8 weeks. The writing tasks were given according to writing process. The findings were that, firstly, there were statistically significant writing apprehension's reduction and self-expression's improvement through the scaffolding provided in writing class. Secondly, writing apprehension's reduction and self-expression's improvement were significant in supportive scaffolding group. Thirdly, media literacy predicted writing apprehension. The practical implications of these findings are discussed herein, with particular attention on ways for writing apprehension's reduction as well as media literacy's enhancement.