Promoting student engagement in online collaborative writing through a student‐facing social learning analytics tool.

Background: Online Collaborative Writing (OCW) has been reported to be useful to improve writing quality in higher education. However, challenges emerge during the collaborative processes, mainly centering on how to sustain active interactions and communications in order to complete a high quality o...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Vol. 38; no. 1; pp. 192 - 209
Autores principales: Chen, Si, Ouyang, Fan, Jiao, Pengcheng
Formato: pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Feb2022
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Background: Online Collaborative Writing (OCW) has been reported to be useful to improve writing quality in higher education. However, challenges emerge during the collaborative processes, mainly centering on how to sustain active interactions and communications in order to complete a high quality of writing. Objectives: Using the design‐based research, this research designs and implements a student‐facing SLA tool that integrates multi‐method analytics to present social interactions, writing topics, and topic connections and to empirically investigate the effects of this tool on student engagement during OCW. Methods: This research uses both quantitative content analysis, statistical analysis, and qualitative analysis to examine the effects of the SLA tool on students' social and cognitive engagement as well as students' perceptions about the usefulness and usability of this tool. Results and Conclusions: Results showed that the SLA tool improved students' social and cognitive engagement, and most students perceived that the SLA tool was useful for the OCW activity. Based on the findings, implications of tool development and pedagogical design are proposed to foster students' online collaborative writing quality. Lay Description: What is currently known about the this topic: Online collaborative writing has been widely adopted in higher education.It is difficult for students to sustain active engagement in OCW.Learning analytics implementations have potential to foster student engagement. What this paper adds: A student‐facing SLA tool was developed to visually demonstrate student engagement.The SLA tool improved students' social and cognitive engagement.Students perceived the SLA tool useful for improving collaborative writing. Implications for practitioners: Tool implications include visualized representation, feedback contextualization, and influence of social comparison.Pedagogical implications include metacognition competency, instructional feedback, and collaborative characteristics.