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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Using Wikis to Evaluate Students’ Contributions to Collaborative Writing in Teacher Education

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description

Wikis as collaboration tools may serve various purposes in teacher education such as group project, glossary creation, teacher evaluation, and document review. However, despite their potentialities for collaboration, it is still difficult to determine the extent to which students contribute to collaborative writing. Research studies are mostly perception-based and limited to participants’ subjective views. Recently, a growing number of research studies have used the data log of the wiki that enables the retrieval of students’ contributions to collaborative writing. The data log is inherently more reliable than participants’ subjective perceptions to explore collaborative writing activities by means of wiki. This work uses the data log and a taxonomy of category actions to investigate students’ contributions to collaborative writing over a period of three years. The work also discusses factors that may influence collaborative writing activities in teacher education, and suggests some recommendations to enhance the level of collaboration.