A Comparison of Collaborative Learning and Audience Awareness in Two Computer-Mediated Writing Environments (original) (raw)

Collaborative Learning and Sense of Audience in Two Computer-Mediated Discourse Communities

2001

Currently, university composition programs are experimenting with the delivery of online writing courses, without the component of face-to-face interaction. To assess the efficacy of this delivery medium, a study compared two groups of undergraduate students in a course on argumentative writing taught by the same instructor: one group taking the course in an onsite computer-networked classroom (n=20) and the other taking the course online (n=16) . In both groups, students had opportunities for synchronous and asynchronous electronic interactions about readings and text production, including group work, hands-on workshop activities, guided discussions, and peer response sessions. The distinguishing characteristic was the absence of the face-to-face component in the online class. With each writing assignment--four argumentative texts of 1,000-1,200 words and a longer research paper--students went through the cycle of determining their purpose and audience, brainstorming, drafting, rev...

Collaboration, community, identity: Engaged e-learning and e-teaching in an online writing course

This paper presents a narrative enquiry of the use of learning technologies and communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) in creating and delivering the online Master of Arts (Writing) at Swinburne University of Technology. We consider the research question of how we have come to understand and practice elements of a social constructivist pedagogy involving engaged, learner-centred peer and community support both as a creative team and as e-moderators. We consider, too, that our pedagogy is informed by poststructural understandings of learner identities as invested and unfixed (Weedon, 1997). This study utilizes the self as data by drawing on narratives of course developers and lecturers collaborating to create unique materials. While our methodology utilises elements of autoethonography (Chang, 2008), it also involves analyzing themes and narrative configurations in stories (Polkinghorne, 1995), specifically those of tutors and students. Our narrative exemplifies and proposes strategies for writing e-curriculum for web 2.0; for scaffolding e-learning, and for creating and maintaining communities of invested, engaged learners. Simultaneously we add nuances to the scholarly conversation about e-learning communities, e-curriculum development and subjective academic narrative methodology. This paper relates the ongoing story of the use of learning technologies in creating and delivering the online Master of Arts (Writing) at Swinburne University of Technology (SUT). Ours is a story spanning a decade, questioning how we have come to understand and practice elements of a social constructivist pedagogy involving learner-centred peer support and engaging learners within communities of practice. Broadly, what have we learned that we can share with providers of online learning? More specifically, how have our experiences of such teaching interventions as building and maintaining online communities of learners and fostering 'critical friendships' impacted on the student experience of studying Writing online and the tutor

Putting Pedagogical Writing Theories Into Practice Using Online Collaborative Tools and Computer-Mediated Communication

EDULEARN19 Proceedings, 2019

This presentation will take the audience on a journey through recent pedagogical writing theories and show how they can be implemented and enhanced by modern technology. We start with how “Process writing” developed into “Post Process” writing by placing more emphasis on the social aspect, viewing writing as a social construct rather than an individual one. We then move onto genre-based pedagogy specifically the stage known as “Joint construction”. Modern Technology can not only facilitate these developments but also redefine and drive them by allowing students to collaborate more easily with each other and with their tutor. Using online writing tools such as “Googledocs” or adapting office management systems like “Quip”, students can work on the same writing task and use text to chat with each other and their tutor about the content, organization and language they need to complete the task. The presentation will show how technology can be used to open new channels of communication ...

Applying Online Collaborative Writing to Enhance SIU Sophomore English Majors’ Writing Skills

2021

Online learning that makes learning more engaging and stimulating has long been a part of 21 st-century education. This case study explores how online collaborative writing helps to improve EFL students' writing skills and how students perceive the use of this teaching method. The Saigon International University participants included 19 English-majored students who practiced writing collaboratively with Google Documents throughout a 15-week Writing course. They were first instructed to individually brainstorm vocabulary and structures needed for an essay before working together in groups to create an essay outline. The lecturer played the role of a facilitator to assign tasks for each group, supervise, and provide instant feedback during the process of essay writing. Data were collected through a pre-test, a post-test, and questionnaires, and then were analyzed using the mixed methods approach. The results indicated that most participants made a significant improvement in their writing abilities as well as tended to have a positive attitude towards this innovative method. Due to the lack of past literature exploring the impacts of such an online teaching approach on enhancing writing skills, this case study is of vital importance as it provides an in-depth understanding of the educational technology for improving learning performance.

Collaborative Writing in a Computer-Supported Classroom: Mediation, and Self-Assessed Beliefs and Attitudes about Writing

2015

This classroom study investigated how computer-based writing tools and collaborative writing tasks mediated the development of individual writing competencies among 35 graduate students during a 4-week course in Taiwan focused on English tests like the TOEFL. I prepared a unique platform of writing tools for the course and then quantified the types of writing knowledge generated from students' collaborative writing (CW) and uses of these mediation tools, then associated these with the students’ CW performance and then individual writing performance on 3 drafts of 4 TOEFL writing tasks over the duration of the course. Data included collaborative writers’ dialogues and online browsing histories and all compositions produced during the course. Supplementary data were questionnaires and interviews on students’ perceived changes in communications, reflections on CW, and self-assessed beliefs about their writing abilities. A comparison class of 26 students, which I also taught a year ...

A Case Study regarding the Comparison of Collaborative Writing in Digital and Face-to-Face Environments

International Journal of Psychology and Educational Studies, 2021

The present case study aims to compare collaborative writing activities produced on the Padlet website on the internet and in a face-to-face (F2F) environment. This study for which criterion sampling was used included two different groups, both of which were formed with four people. For the triangulation of the case study, texts produced F2F and online, video recordings of the F2F writing process and records of the group interviews conducted after the internet practice. Thus, comparative evaluation regarding various components, such as writing processes, writing achievement, group interaction, creativity, and opinions of participants was performed depending on different data types. the findings suggest that the online environment shone out with advantages, such as time, flexibility, supporting creativity through and multimedia tools, whereas F2F writing offered advantages in communication and simultaneous changes by group members. However, it was detected that online texts were more successful than F2F texts and students' achievement perceptions were higher in their Padlet texts.

Inquiry into online learning communities: potential for fostering collaborative writing

Journal of China Computer-Assisted Language Learning

This study used a community of inquiry (CoI) framework to investigate the potential in terms of fostering collaborative writing of integrating online learning communities (OLCs) with English language learning. The aim was to examine the possible impacts of out-of-class OLCs (guided by teachers) on students’ collaborative English writing outcomes and learning satisfaction. In accordance with the CoI framework, an experiment was conducted and both quantitative (end-of-semester group essay scores) and qualitative (interviews and field notes) data were collected. The results indicate the teacher-guided out-of-class OLC approach to be more effective than the lecture-based approach when it comes to fostering English learners’ collaborative writing. More specifically, the online approach helps students to write better group research essays, develop higher levels of satisfaction concerning their learning experiences and devote more time to the learning process. The results suggest that futu...

Growing Together: Utilizing Writing Communities in the Writing Methods Course

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education, 2022

As a graduate student at Arizona State University between 2017 and 2019, I had the opportunity to teach several English Language Art (ELA) methods courses in our teacher preparation program. The class I taught most often was Methods in Teaching English Composition with all secondary ELA preservice teachers. As a part of my dissertation work, I designed a unique classroom format I hoped would foster preservice teachers' positive beliefs about their writing and their ability to teach writing. A description of the course I designed and several of the findings I observed follows. The Course The 15 weeklong, three-credit Methods in Teaching English Composition course explores instructional approaches and philosophies for teaching writing in the secondary ELA classroom. The class involved three major writing assignments. The first assignment was a Multimodal Writing Literacy Narrative (Hope, Alford, & Chatham-Vazquez, 2022; Hope, 2020) in which I asked students to find multimodal artifacts from their past writing lives (e.g., tweets, literary magazine submissions, journals, letters, diaries, emails, text messages, etc.) to illustrate their past development as writers in and beyond the formal classroom setting. The second assignment was the Theory Infographic assignment (Alford, 2019). This assignment invites students to select and research a learning theory, such as experiential learning, critical pedagogies, or active learning, and then create a visually compelling infographic to share the learning theory and what it might look like enacted in a secondary ELA writing classroom. The last assignment was the Future Classroom Project. It is an extended broadly constructed project detailing what students hope for in their future ELA classroom design and practice. We met biweekly and had weekly readings and discussion posts based on those readings. It was a flipped classroom design, so they did the readings before class, and during class, we worked on activities connected to the homework to enhance their understanding of each concept. The unique element I added to this course and studied was embedded writing communities. Throughout the course,