Collaborative Writing and Web 2'0: Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities

1
Collaborative Writing and Web 2.0 Realities,
Challenges, and Opportunities

• Greg Kessler
• Ohio University

2
Collaborative Writing

• Parks, Hamers Huot-Lemonnier (2003) identify
  four types of collaboration
• Joint collaboration two or more writers working
  on the same text who assume equal responsibility
  for its production in terms of official
  authorship, although individual contributions to
  the finished product may vary.
• Parallel Collaboration two or more writers who,
  although working on the same text, do not assume
  equal responsibility for its production in terms
  of official authorship, although again,
  individual contributions to the final product
  varied
• Incidental Collaboration Generally brief,
  spur-of-the moment requests for help directly
  related to the writing task at hand
• Covert Collaboration Getting information from
  documents or other linguistic or nonlinguistic
  sources during the process of producing a text.

3
Research on Collaborative Writing

• Collaboration contributes to
• Increased complexity in writing (Sotillo, 2000)
• Higher quality of writing (Storch, 2005)
• Source of student motivation (Kowal Swain,
  1994 Swain Lapkin 1998)
• Students participated in web based writing in
  ways that reflected their comfort with
  technology, past writing experience, comfort with
  peers and anticipated teacher expectations (Ware,
  2004)
• Ware (2004) encourages flexibility in grading
  collaborative written work to avoid establishing
  a sense of competition rather than collaboration.
  
• The evolution of collaborative writing may be
  intrinsically connected with iterations of
  technology since new developments provide new
  opportunities for collaboration.

4
Research on Collaboration in CMC

• CMC fosters negotiation (Blake, 2000 Lee, 2002
  Smith, 2003)
• Allows increased student control (Chun, 1994)
• Promotes a wider variety of linguistic strategies
  (Smith, 2003).
• Public nature of the information creates sense of
  accountability (Sengupta, 2001)
• Students focus on task completion rather than
  negotiation (Smith, 2003)
• Students use CMC in establishing and maintaining
  relationships (Belz, 2003 Bikowski, 2008) 

5
Limitations of Previous Research on Collaborative
Writing

• Limited to pair or triad work
• F2f
• Extensive teacher intervention
• Lacking autonomy building

6
What is web 2.0?

• Intelligent and dynamic systems
• Web based
• Allow for many-to-many collaboration
• Examples wikis, blogs, Second Life

7
Interaction in web 2.0
Published Materials Guest speakers (Near and
far) Web-forum Student-created Materials/conten
t

• Other
• Students
• Teacher
• Teacher
• Created
• Materials
• RSS Feed
• Podcasts

Glossary
8
Why study online student data?

• Changing language use
• Changing opportunities to participate
• Observable behavior
• Improve management of classroom
• Improve student experience
• Enhance out of class opportunities

9
Observations of Online Communication

• CMC resembles speech
• Focus on meaning rather than form
• Generational/Solidarity
• Sense of empowerment
• Use is unpredictable and evolving
• Tybourne

10
Challenges

• Use is unpredictable and evolving
• Easy to overlook important communication
• Difficult to capture everything
• Authentic environments challenge collection
• Novelty effect
• Social resistance

11
Communication tools Terms

• CMC
• SCMC
• ACMC
• IM
• SMS
• Blog
• Chat
• Tweet
• Forum
• Podcasts
• Wiki
• VOIP
• Email

12
What kinds of collaboration?

• Student to student negotiation
• Small group negotiation
• Many students to many students negotiation
• Student to expert Q A
• Small group to expert Q A
• Student to student production
• Small group production
• Many students to many students production
• Student to teacher Q A
• Student to student Q A
• Etc

13
Developing Autonomy

• Student control over their own learning by
  supporting
• Motivation (Spratt, Humphreys and Chan, 2002)
• Self-direction (Benson, 2001)
• Individual differences (Dörnyei and Skehan, 2003
• Learner setting (Benson, 2001 Meskill, 2002)
• Technology may promote more social opportunities
  for autonomous language practice (Benson, 2001
  Healey, 2007 Schwienhorst, 2003)

14
Overview of studies

• Wiki in Online English Culture Course
• Attention to grammar
• Attention to meaning
• Google Documents in Fulbright Prep class

15
Study 1 Attention to Form in Collaborative wiki
Writing

• Course
• Students
• Task
• Kessler, G. (2009). Student initiated attention
  to form in autonomous wiki based collaborative
  writing. Language Learning Technology, 13(1),
  94-110.

16
Research Questions

• To what degree will NNS EFL teacher candidates
  perform autonomously as they attempt to correct
  their own and others grammar errors in a
  long-term collaborative writing task?
• How accurate will they be in making these peer
  and self corrections?
• What can these postings tell us about students
  and long-term web-based collaborative writing?

17
Coding

• Form Only, Content Only, Form/Content,
  Content/Form
• Accurate, Not Accurate
• --------------------------------------------------
  ------------------------
• Articles
• Coordination
• Fragment
• Part of speech
• Punctuation
• Run on sentence
• Spelling
• Subject/Verb agreement
• Word choice

18
Total Edits
19
Attention to Form in Collaborative wiki Writing
20
Attention to Form in Collaborative wiki Writing
21
Conclusions

• Students were able to meet the knowledge and
  skills subcomponents of ability within
  Littlewoods (1996) autonomy framework, but
  lacked the motivation and/or confidence
  subcomponents of willingness.
• Students attend to accuracy as necessary.
• Self-editing was primarily focused on revisions
  unrelated to form while peer-editing addressed
  form more frequently.
• Students were more likely to be accurate when
  focusing on grammar rather than correcting
  grammar as a secondary act while focusing on
  meaning

22
Conclusions

• Students focused on meaning more than form
• Students considered the wiki an informal space
• Students used the wiki in unexpected ways
• When presented with grammatical errors they had
  made in the autonomous task, they were able to
  quickly resolve them in the follow-up interviews
• The degree of accuracy that participants achieved
  was acceptable for their purposes in this task.
• The teacher candidates felt that they would like
  to utilize similar tasks in their own teaching.

23
Study 2 Attention to Meaning

• Research Questions
• What is the nature of student collaboration in an
  autonomous wiki space?
• What language acts do students use to address
  issues of meaning?
• To what extent are students successful at
  addressing individual meaning related issues.

24
Coding
25
Phases

• Phase I Build and Destroy
• Students collaboratively constructed an emerging
  understanding of the term culture four
  independent times. This phase lasted for the
  first two weeks of the course.
• Phase II Full Collaboration
• This period included collaboration without the
  intermittent large-scale deletions of the first
  phase. At the end of this phase, the final
  version of the wiki was constructed. This phase
  lasted for fourteen weeks.
• Phase III Informal Reflection
• Students used the wiki as if it were a discussion
  board to achieve closure.

26
Language Acts Used
27
Successful and Unsuccessful Acts

• New information

28
Some Observations

• Students working in autonomous spaces are
  inclined to engage in tasks that require less
  critical thinking.
• Students did engage in clarification/elaboration,
  which suggests the willingness to interact with
  the content rather than only adding new
  information or deleting information.
• Some students relied upon mass deletion as their
  only contribution to the wiki.
• Synthesis, a higher order critical thinking
  skill, would have served the evolution of the
  wiki well on many occasions, but students instead
  introduced new information or deleted extant
  information.
• Without the extensive use of synthesis it is
  difficult to succeed at collaborative writing in
  a wiki setting.
• Lack of attention to synthesis resulted in a
  final wiki that may have satisfactorily
  accomplished the task, but did not form a
  cohesive ideal product.

29
Conclusions

• Even though wiki spaces can be ambiguous,
  students can have confidence that their changes
  will likely be perceived as being effective.
• Students benefit from opportunities to practice
  autonomy in flexible learning environments.
• When students are allowed to have their own space
  to collaborate they are likely to build stronger
  relationships with one another.
• Online collaboration leads to a sense of
  ownership which encourages extensive utilization
  of the learning space.
• Students begin to use the space in ways that are
  meaningful to them, but unanticipated by
  instructors or designers.
• Students need to be made aware of the potential
  of autonomous learning space. 
• The quality of the final wiki may not be
  significant. In fact, students may benefit more
  from the process.

30
Implications for New Collaborative Writing

• Students appreciate opportunity to use varied
  environments
• Students may require orientation/explicit
  preparation for tasks
• Level of teacher intervention can vary based on
  task and intent
• Autonomous behavior requires opportunities for
  autonomous practice

31
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