This study was situated at Mountain Middle School (Pseudonym). Students at Mountain Middle School often engage in collaborative compositions embedded within week-long multidisciplinary and multiage units of study called Odysseys. These units of study and the collaborative composition projects are classified as formal cooperative learning. Johnson…

Writing groups have the potential to be positive academic communities, but often become problematic spaces where students go to get their writing "fixed." In this article, the authors draw on literature from peer response groups as well as social justice pedagogies to explore how teachers might develop these groups as spaces for student…

Previous research illustrates the collaborative nature of adolescents' multimodal composing processes. However, few studies have specifically focused on how different modes influence student interactions over time. This study examines how multiple modes (e.g. text, music, visuals, and animations) mediated middle schoolers' composing processes as…

This study aimed at investigating the impact of problem-based learning (PBL) on students' writing skills and the process of teaching and learning. An embedded mixed-method design was applied involving 41 seventh grade students of SMP Negeri 4 Denpasar. In this study, the quantitative data were students' writing skills which were collected through…

The current K-12 educational system often does not engage students in interdisciplinary learning. To address this need, we developed an integrated STEM + L (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Digital Literacies) afterschool programme in which middle school students took discipline-specific roles (writer, scientist, artist, and engineer)…

Aim/Purpose: In this study, the authors examine how an online word processing tool can be used to encourage participation among students of different language backgrounds, including English Language Learners. To be exact, the paper discusses whether student participation in anonymous collaborative writing via Google Docs can lead to more…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to determine the pedagogical value of Wiki technology-enhanced instruction for middle grade students. The sample consisted of three Wiki projects representative of work from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade middle school students. The examination of the data collected from the three samples of Wiki…

The 13th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2020) was originally arranged to take place in Ifrane, Morocco. Due to the SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) epidemic, EDM 2020, as well as most other academic conferences in 2020, had to be changed to a purely online format. To facilitate efficient transmission of…

Narrates one teacher's move from high school to eighth-grade English. Describes a method for teaching middle school students how to write collaboratively. Provides details of writing assignments, units, and techniques successfully utilized, including publishing a teenage magazine. (HB)

Discusses the benefits of collaborative writing in a writing workshop and the value of a social cognitive approach to learning for middle school students. Examines a taped collaborative writing workshop to demonstrate themes of using exploratory talk to stimulate thinking, promoting conceptual understanding, internalizing language to gain…

Focusing on the culture of students with disabilities allows teachers to add another real-world dimension to the multi-cultural atmosphere of their classrooms. While Public Law 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act) legislates what opportunities must exist for the differently able, volunteer program such as "Kids on the…

At the end of a 14-week program designed to help them improve their writing and editing skills and to increase their interest in college, sixth graders at School #74 in Buffalo, New York published a book of their imagined narratives. They titled the book "Kids With a Dream." Acting on the premise that school children have a better…

These proceedings contain the papers of the IADIS International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2013), October 22-24, 2013, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by The University of North Texas (UNT), sponsored by the…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…