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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Collaborative Writing with Wikis: Pedagogical and Technological Implications for Successful Implementation in Teacher Education

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description

Wikis have been promoted as tools that foster collaborative learning and writing. They enable multiple users to edit a document collaboratively and support online written communication between participants. While most wiki research is based on students’ subjective perceptions of the wiki learning environment, a number of studies have drawn on the data log that is automatically generated by wikis. The data log enables the analysis of students’ activities performed on the wiki in terms of work distribution, level of contribution, types of activities, timing of contribution, and work intervals. This information is more reliable to analyze collaborative writing activities than subjective perceptions. Using MediaWiki as a platform, this chapter aims at exploring the data logs generated by wikis as students performed collaborative writing activities. This chapter also analyzes written comments posted by students on the discussion page of the wiki. On the basis of the findings, pedagogical and technological implications are drawn for teacher educators using wikis for collaborative writing.