Transforming the Writing Center with Computers

2012

The objective of this paper is to analyze the process of construction of collaborative writing practices of a group of students of a Brazilian secondary public school, by means of the use of two Internet tools: instant messaging and e-mail. As for the type of research, it is a typical qualitative investigation, which is characterized, more specifically, as a research action, whose intention is not only restricted to understand or describe the world of practice, but, above of all, to try to change it. We base our theoretical discussion upon the digital revolution occurred with the Web 2.0 advent, in which we show how changes inherent to the passage from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 reflected in the creation processes on internet, and upon the theoretical-analytical devices, proposed by Lowry et al. (2004), which are based upon: collaborative writing activities, collaborative writing strategies, collaborative writing roles and collaborative writing modes.

Pedagogy: Critical Approaches To Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 2009

The group paper: as a student, you may have had experiences similar to ours, because you probably liked to write more than your peers. This paper often came at the end of the semester, a culmination of all the work that you and, supposedly, your peers had completed up to that point, seamlessly synthesized into a nal report. Or, if your experience was like ours, you ended up shaping a collection of disconnected paragraphs from your peers into some kind of document, hardly a cohesive paper, strung together with poor transitions and the whi of a thesis.

International Journal on E-Learning, 2007

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, , 2004

This paper summarizes three field experiments involving distributed collaborative writing (CW) in traditional educational settings creating a hybrid form of distributed education. One finding shows that specialized collaborative tools allowed for parallel work, group awareness, and coordination, providing substantial advantages over traditional word processors in distributed CW. However, it was also found that advanced CW tools alone did not provide optimal results in distributed CW groups; such groups also needed high levels of process structure, which can be delivered through carefully constructed scripts. Moreover, it was found that introducing face-to-face meetings in distributed CW work did not necessarily provide advantages over work that was performed in all-distributed settings. Given these findings, this paper concludes by discussing the contributions, implications, limitations, and future research possibilities for hybrid-distributed education.

Using mixed research methods, this study investigated the effect of a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment in improving the fifth graders' writing performance and outcomes. Thirty-four students participated in a real-world writing project, taking on alternative roles of journalists and editors in creating a school newspaper. While both groups were engaged in the task of collaborative writing, the CSCL group was supported by a web-based software Knowledge Forum whereas the control group created their articles via paper and pencil. During the research, observation notes were taken and students were interviewed. The results showed that students who worked with Knowledge Forum had significant gains in their writing performance compared with the control group. In addition, the students in Knowledge Forum were more motivated to write than the other group. The study demonstrates that CSCL augments collaborative learning and makes individuals' thinking visible via its technological affordances.

Creativity and Discovery in the University Writing Class: A Teacher’s Guide, 2015

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON E LEARNING, 2007

2002

This paper analyses transformations in collaborative activities that a computersupported collaborative writing system introduces into co-authors' practices, and, discusses implications for the design of collaborative tools for writing. The analysis is grounded in user studies of four different groups of co-authors writing an academic report during two different collaborative situations. Two groups collaborate face-to-face using a word processor and the other two groups collaborate at a distance using a synchronous collaborative writing system. The study analyses differences between the activities of the groups and focuses on transformations that the CSCW system introduces into the organization of the co-authors' collaboration. The results show that the use of a CSCW system presents constraints in the collaborative activity; in particular we observed a cleavage that makes co-authors write different parts of a common document independently, i.e. without collaborating. This result opens up important issues related to the design of writing technologies for collaboration: how collaborative can collaborative writing be when it is supported by CSCW systems? How can the design of collaborative tools support organized and integrative collaborative activities such as writing? We discuss these issues and some of the alternatives that collaborative tools should offer for writing.

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 ...