In this paper I will report on a personal experimentation with Facebook and wikis as collaborative learning tools. The aims of implementing these strategies were to develop students' writing skills and to change their attitudes towards learning in the digital age. I delved into this research because I do believe that learning in the new millennium…

The allocation of authorship credit in academic publication raises complex ethical issues but is comparatively under-researched, particularly in the social sciences. The paper analyses the results of research into attitudes to multiple authorship based on a survey questionnaire of academics working in education faculties in universities in Hong…

Writing at the doctoral level presents many challenges for second language writers. This paper reports on a longitudinal study investigating English as a second language (ESL) doctoral students' writing problems and the strategies they developed to meet these challenges. Eight students were interviewed four times over a two-year period during…

The 21st century has seen the emergence of blogs as an authentic writing practice that provides students with a sense of immediacy by allowing them to document their lives as stories or to engage their classmates with real or imaginary tales. In this study, Saudi EFL students were asked to post their writing in a blog and collaborate with their…

This paper describes and reflects on a teaching experience developed as a complimentary workshops to MA class on history, theory and politics of consumption. We used Wikipedia as a tool to consider the circuit of knowledge production in the Web 2.0 era, where consumers are no longer passive audiences but producers and consumers at the same time.…

A time-series analysis was used to investigate Arabic undergraduate students' (n = 50) perceptions of assessed group work in a major government institution of higher education in Qatar. A longitudinal mixed methods approach was employed. Likert scale questionnaires were completed over the duration of a collaborative writing event. Additionally,…

Scaffolding helps the novice to accomplish a task goal or solve a problem that otherwise would be beyond unassisted efforts. Scaffolding firstly aims to support the learner in accomplishing the task and secondly in learning from the task and improving future performance. This study has examined pre-service teachers' experiences of…

Collaborative writing is a task commonly used for learning and assessment in higher education. The complexity of this type of task requires special support for learning contents. Feedback can be used as a key element to improve students' learning and engagement. This paper presents and evaluates a teaching innovation that sought to design a model…

This study analyses and compares the use of Web 2.0 tools by students in both learning and leisure contexts. Data were collected based on a questionnaire applied to 234 students from the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and the results were analysed by using descriptive analysis, paired samples t-tests, cluster analyses and Kruskal-Wallis tests.…

To ensure student activity in webinars we have defined 10 learning tasks focusing on production and communication e.g. collaborative writing, discussion and polling, and investigated how the technology supports the learning activities. The three project partners in the VisPed-project use different video-conferencing systems, and we analyzed how it…

The present study investigates whether learner set up in interaction, namely in pairs or small groups, influences the frequency and outcome of lexical language-related episodes (LREs) and L2 vocabulary learning. Thirty Spanish English as a foreign language (EFL) university learners took part in the study. They worked in four groups and seven pairs…

This article reports a small-scale study carried out in a beginners' Spanish class of second year undergraduate students. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of a vocabulary task in terms of its impact on vocabulary acquisition, the learners' approach to vocabulary learning and their motivation and engagement. The task…

The proposed interactive online group within the cloud computing technologies as a main contribution of this paper provides easy and simple access to the cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) system and delivers effective educational tools for students and teacher on after-class group writing assignment activities. Therefore, this study…

The various tools available on Web 2.0 enable the interactions in a Community of Practice (CoP) to be optimized and may discourage the participation of members. Thus, the choice of the tools is fundamental for the growth and maintenance of a CoP. With a focus on this and, from the analysis of the characteristics of the group and the activities…

The study examines pedagogical approaches in using wikis in teaching and learning in teacher education colleges. It focuses on: instructors' motivation for wiki-based teaching; course types; teaching methods; evaluation; content structure; characteristics of student collaboration and learning outcomes; involvement of instructors in the learning…