Efficacy of an Electronic Editing Strategy with College Students with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

In this study we investigated an editing strategy to develop effective proofreading skills (i.e., mechanics and substantive revisions) within electronic texts through an experimental pre- and posttest group design with random assignment. Fifteen college students with intellectual and developmental disabilities participated in this investigation. The results of this study reveal a significant positive difference for the EDIT Strategy instruction group when compared with the non-intervention group for the total number and type of editing errors corrected in the posttest and follow-up 5 and 11-week maintenance phases. The findings support the use of the EDIT Strategy with study participants in improving the editing skills of postsecondary learners with intellectual and developmental disabilities.