In the course of inclusion and the digital transformation processes in schools and teaching, writing is taking on an increasingly significant role. However, the DESI study (Deutsch Englisch Schülerleistungen International) in Germany and the NAEP study (National Assessment of Educational Progress) in the USA show that many students fail to successfully write high-quality texts (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012, 2019; Neumann & Lehmann, 2008). There is a high demand for appropriate and effective support tools for inclusive education. For this reason, the digital application "Reise nach Narrativa digital - eine Welt voller Geschichten" (Journey to Narrativa digital - A World full of Stories) was developed for 5th grade students, which uses a structured set-up to guide students systematically and motivationally through the complex writing process from an initial collection of ideas to a finished story (Schröder & Vierbuchen, 2021). In this study, the question is investigated whether this digital support application supports heterogeneous learning groups in class 5 in writing their stories.  
A quantitative longitudinal main study in a pre-post follow-up control group design was chosen as the research design to examine the effectiveness in terms of the positive development of quantitative and qualitative text quality as indicators of narrative writing competence. The web application was tested on a sample of n=243 students in seven middle schools in Lower Saxony in Germany over a period of eight weeks. The results show a mixed picture. The quantity of stories written improved only marginally for the pupils in the experimental group. The quality of the stories, which is subdivided into holistic and analytical text quality, shows a positive development trend at the post time compared to the control group, which decreases at the third measurement point. Students with a diagnosed special educational need for learning benefit especially from writing with the digital writing support tool, which was demonstrated by the significant improvement in the quantity of their stories. In addition, it was found that the characteristic of the students, such as gender and family language background, made no difference to the support.      
Overall, the web application, as a meaningful didactic embedding in the classroom, can contribute to the support of narrative writing competence and helps the students in their writing process.

Within the framework of a summative evaluation, the effectiveness of the digital support programme is examined. In order to be able to record the most important target areas of the study, procedures were used that are standardised and meaningful. In order to measure writing competence, the students in both groups were given a 45-minute writing assignment with three different pictures as writing stimuli to choose from at all three measurement times. They were evaluated with the Global Scale for Narrative Texts (Canz, 2015) for measuring holistic text quality and with the Textbeurteilungsmatrix Erzählendes Schreiben (Text Assessment Matrix Narrative Writing) (Schulden, 2022). The quantity of narrative texts was assessed using the commonly used Total Words Written (Hosp et al., 2016). Furthermore, teachers were interviewed for the subgrouping and a questionnaire was filled out by the students. In this way, the subgroups of students with learning support needs and with a lack of motivation to write could be determined. Biographical data were also collected in the questionnaire, so that the influence of the characteristic correlations of gender and family language background on the support effect could be examined.

The quantity of the written stories hardly improved for the students in the experimental group. The quality of the stories, which is subdivided into holistic and analytical text quality, shows a positive development trend at the post time compared to the control group, which decreases at the third measurement time. Students with a diagnosed special educational need for learning benefit especially from writing with the digital writing support tool, which was demonstrated by the significant improvement in the quantity of their stories. In addition, it was found that the characteristic, such as gender and family language background, made no difference to the support. This is encouraging in that the web application can be used regardless of gender and family language background. Overall, it can be seen that with a sensible didactic embedding in the lessons, the web application can contribute to the promotion of narrative writing competence and helps the students in their writing process. It can be concluded that the web application is an effective support tool. The study shows that the media competences of teachers and students play an important role for the success of the support.

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