Using a wiki-based collaborative process writing pedagogy to facilitate collaborative writing among Chinese primary school students

Abstract

<span>This case study explored collaborative writing in Chinese among 59 primary four Chinese students using a </span><em>Wiki-based Collaborative Process Writing Pedagogy</em><span> (WCPWP) in Shenzhen, China. It aimed mainly to design and orchestrate a WCPWP in order to facilitate students' Chinese writing. It investigated students' collaborative writing process and their performance on a wiki, and explored the perceptions and attitudes of the teacher and her students towards WCPWP. A wiki-based writing environment named </span><em>Joyous Writing Club</em><span> (JWC) was designed and developed using MediaWiki software. Data was collected from questionnaires, online wiki documents, interviews, and observations. The results illustrated students' collaborative writing process and their products on the wiki. Besides, the results showed that students perceived WCPWP was beneficial in boosting writing motivation, increasing group interactions, and extending the audience for their writing. This study may help primary educators gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between technology, pedagogy and education. It may also provide practical recommendations for primary school Chinese language teachers in the integration of Web 2.0 tools (wikis, </span><em>Google Docs</em><span>) as well as the use of effective pedagogical strategies in the teaching of Chinese writing.</span>

Attitudinal Factors Affecting Wiki Group Collaboration for English Writing

“…Ma and Yuen (2008) who studied on student journalists learning news writing report that wikis effectively facilitate learners' writing processes; particularly their revision behaviour and this eventually improve their writing performance. In addition, the study by Li et al (2012) reveals that with wikis, students are more motivated to look for additional information on the web as they are already online and this encourages them to learn new vocabulary and language forms which contribute to improved writing.…”

Putting Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) in Action: An Advanced Wiki-Based Collaborative Process Writing Pedagogy (AWCPWP)

“…More exciting and invigorating, Mixed Between-Within-Subjects ANOVA (two-way RANOVA) indicated that DWCPWP had a significantly positive effect on the writing attitudes of students [7]. However, the results showed that DWCPWP had a positive but insignificant effect on students' writing ability.…”

“…However, the results indicated that the WCPWP was far more from perfect and there was much room for improvement [6]. Li, Chu and Ki improved the WCPWP [7], which can be named as Developing Wiki-based Collaborative Process Writing Pedagogy (DWCPWP).…”

“…Moreover, in current Mainland China, most teachers' understanding of wiki technology is still in its infancy [8], and seldom teachers can really use wiki effectively in their writing courses in practice [7].…”

A novel approach to assess collaborative learning processes and group performance through the knowledge convergence

“…For example, social network analysis method that investigating relationships among group members (Aviv et al 2003;De Laat et al 2007) content analysis method that analyzing the knowledge construction (Weinberger and Fischer 2006) or depth of understanding (Zhang et al 2009), conversation analysis that identifying action sequences or turn-taking (Zemel et al 2005), interviews or questionnaires for evaluating the perceptions of students during collaborative learning (Jarmon et al 2009;Li et al 2012;Prokofieva 2013). However, the assessment of collaborative learning processes as well as learning outcomes from the perspective of knowledge convergence remains lacking.…”