Students’ perceptions of online scaffolding tools for improving writing skills

Scaffolding is a teaching strategy that provides temporary support and guidance to learners as they develop their skills. Through online teaching and scaffolding clinics for novice writers, this narrative qualitative study aimed to assist students and novice writers in improving their scientific paper writing skills. For data collection, this study utilized open-ended interviews, observations, field notes, and online discussions to gather data. The study’s findings reveal five distinct roles that teachers can assume during teaching: diagnosticians, instructors, teachers or models, proofreaders, and reviewers. In this instance, novices perceive scaffolding to play two roles: improving cognitive and interactive writing tools. However, future studies should pay more attention to the scaffolding effects of strategy, technique, and students’ levels of thought, taking into account background characteristics such as ability, sex, race, ethnicity, and learning style preference, as well as their status within the groups. This study suggests that the government should provide excellent research-based outcomes rather than a final report based only on notes because creating a scientific paper involves perseverance and cannot be accomplished in one night’s effort.