This paper reports on a pilot study designed to develop writing proficiency in French via collaborative writing activities at intermediate level at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Twenty four students in the final year of French studies program took part in this innovative approach which integrates multimodal functionality of the…

This study aimed to investigate the effects of the online course tools, specifically discussion boards, blogs and wikis, the built-in facilities of Blackboard as computer-mediated communication integrated in e-learning environments on improving integrated reading and writing and on the attitudes of EFL college students towards literacy skills in…

While collaborative learning and collaborative writing can be of great value to student learning, the implementation of a technology-supported collaborative learning environment is a challenge. With their built-in features for supporting collaborative writing and social communication, wikis are a promising platform for collaborative learning;…

Institutions of higher learning are increasingly asked to defend curricular and pedagogical outcomes. Faculty must demonstrate that simulations are productive tools for learning, but a review of the literature shows that the evidence of their effectiveness is inconclusive, despite their popularity in the classroom. Simulations may in fact help…

This study proposes the use of case-based reasoning to help educators design with Web 2.0. Principles for designing a web-enhanced case-based activity (CBA) were used to design an online professional development course for a group of 16 in-service educators. The Learning in Context model was used as a scaffold to help participants in their design…

This paper is an attempt to explore the interaction discourse of second language undergraduate learners in the online peer review process of a writing classroom in Hong Kong. Specifically, the writer sought to investigate the types of online discourse learners have in the peer discussions on their writing, and to examine the role of explicit…

The objective of this study was to develop an online report writing activity that was a constructive and cooperative learning process for a course on traditional general physics experiments. Wiki, a CMC authoring tool, was used to construct the writing platform. Fifty-eight undergraduate students (33 men and 25 women), working in randomly assigned…

The purpose of this study was to explore the codependencies of the social and technical structures that yield Wikipedia the website and Wikipedia the community. In doing so, the research investigated the implications of such a sociotechnical system for the maintenance of the project and the emergence of collective intelligence. Using a theoretical…

This paper reports on a design study conducted within the Egyptian context of pre-service EFL teacher education, which implemented a Community of Practice (CoP) design facilitated by Facebook, to integrate some new forms of online writing. Based on some preliminary empirical results triangulated with literature review, a preliminary design…

This dissertation is a study of scientific collaboration at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a modern, multi-disciplinary, distributed laboratory involved in sensor network research. By use of survey research and network analysis, this dissertation examines the collaborative ecology of CENS in terms of three networks of…

The use of Web 2.0 communication practices in assessment may offer a new approach to assessment "as" learning, a goal for assessment that is more highly valued than assessment "of" and even "for" learning in the literature. This paper describes a case study of a wiki-writing assignment that aimed to achieve this goal. The stakes were high, in that…

The University of South Australia and Purdue University (Indiana) launched the "Grammar Gang Blog" in June 2008, as a collaborative forum for talking about language. The blog reaches a far-flung community of learners from Australia to the United States, Brisbane to Bangalore and Ghana to Germany. The Grammar Gang--where Owls meet…

This study analyzes the collaborative writing sessions of two groups of advanced diploma economics students with mixed proficiency. Although studies in collaborative writing usually highlight the mixed results of students' collaboration ranging from promoting peer learning to having unresolved conflict, the findings of this paper only provide the…

This article reports a mixed-method research probing the effect of utilizing a blog-buddy system on English for academic purposes learners' writing performance. Sixty Iranian undergraduate engineering students at Iran University of Science and Technology Virtual Campus participated in this study. Our analysis of the students' writings indicated…

Twenty-first century technology has changed the way tools are used to support and enhance learning and instruction. Cloud computing and interactive white boards, make it possible for learners to interact, simulate, collaborate, and document learning experiences and real world problem-solving. This article discusses how various technologies (blogs,…