Collaborative!


My peers and I have been working on wikis for several weeks within an intensitive collaboration to create texts by working closely together both talking through and writing the text together. Given that writing is a complex and never-ended task, collaborative writing with multiple authors adds to the complexity.

All our e-tivities have certain steps in common: at the very beginning of a new wiki page each of us write an individual part then the team edits and revises the draft in small groups. At the end we get feedback from our e-tutor Sarah mainly concerning the grammatical and lexical aspects and the wiki page lay-out.

Given that group work takes more time than if we all do it ourselves, I'm sure it provides a better learning experience . I guess it is simply a matter of students being lazy and group work is great for motivation: they force you to be responsible, to do more and better work! I've already observed that the result can be both enjoyable and frustrating: it can be a pleasure because responsabilities are divided and problems discussed and solved together but it can be also frustrating because there's always someone else judging our work.

I think my personal contributions within our collaborative wiki pages are improving thanks to the use of Skype too. On the wiki page there's always the possibility to leave a comment and my peers and I have widely use this comment botton to leave ideas, suggestions or help requests but it's often taken some time before someone's replied; using Skype chat for instant messenging it's quicker and you can easily go on with your work.

Since I've been using Skype I think I'm doing better my work and I don't feel alone in front of my computer ;-)

Alice


Photo taken from Flickr