This Quick Fix describes how the emerging "writing for Wikipedia" activity allows replacing a traditional written paper with a more motivating, digital assignment that also allows students to contribute to society. It presents the most efficient ways to incorporate Wikipedia into one's teaching curriculum, while also discussing best…

Teaching technology when technology moves at the speed of light can be a challenging task. In addition to the fast-paced changes in this field, students possess a range of skills, experiences, and attitudes about technology such that there is no common baseline for content and activities. This article reflects on a technology-related crowdsourcing…

In this article the author explores ways in which affinity spaces (Gee, 2004) can be adapted for English language instruction. Affinity spaces attract participants who enthusiastically share their passions, such as popular culture, video games, or literature. Researchers have found that affinity spaces contribute to improvements in reading…

In January 2019 the University of Derby delivered its first module entirely dedicated to and structured around editing and writing articles for Wikipedia. The course focused on using Wikipedia as a means to improve students' skills in writing for public consumption, in addition to enhancing their digital and collaborative skills. Students…

The paper shows the importance of Storybird, an online platform, for developing writing and storytelling among young learners of a foreign language. Storybird is an extremely engaging collaborative storywriting website that embodies three ideas--creating, reading, and sharing. It is also a collaborative storytelling tool that allows students to…

In this article I focus on the mediational role of communicative activity in the co-construction of meaning involved when pupils write collaboratively. I explore the developmental nature of peer intermental or social activity within a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) by drawing on perspectives from sociocultural theory and the dialogical aspects…

This article outlines a set of features that wiki engines require to successfully host collaborative educational scenarios. The authors explore multiple issues that deal with the use wikis with learning activities. One of the first issues to solve is software support for assessment methodologies. The second is choosing between using an integrated…

In graduate education, there is often a great divide between classroom learning and research endeavors. Using learning community (LC) values and strategies, our goal is to build stronger and more meaningful ties between these two aspects of graduate education so that students see them as complimentary learning rather than separate components. This…

This paper discusses the pedagogical and technological aspects of assessing wiki-based collaborative learning activities. The first part of the paper presents a general framework of collaborative learning assessment. The framework is based on four aspects of assessment, characterized by four questions: who, what, how and by whom. The second part…

It is the scope of this article to present a theoretical framework for successful collaboration and our ideas on how it might be implemented in a first-year college composition classroom. We began by creating a collaborative assignment for our composition classes based on a very cursory understanding of successful collaboration. In light of this…

The Poetry Generating Loop is a new kind of generative writing circle that offers concrete, creative ways to get students involved in and excited about poetry. By writing poems in groups, students are able to learn poetic terms and experiment with techniques through their writing--a process that can shed new light on the world of poetry. (Contains…

Describes the "Numbers Game"--a collaborative simulation to prepare students for participation in a full collaborative writing project. (RS)

This report offers a number of specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help 4th- to 12th-grade students in this nation's schools. The report focuses on all students, not just those who display writing difficulties, although this latter group is deservedly the focus of much attention. The premise of this report is that all students…

According to Corman (1995), theory and practice are two sides of the same coin. Each is essential for effective function in organizational contexts and effective teaching in organizational communication courses. However, the classroom experience can benefit from increased efforts to provide students with activities that allow them to apply theory…