Coordinating collaborative writing in an online environment

Abstract

This study investigated how university students (n = 28) coordinated their collaborative online writing and what kinds of coordination profiles were found among the students. Further, the study examined the quality of the essays produced by groups of students varying in their combinations of coordination profiles. Students’ written comments on their writing processes (n = 583) were divided into episodes focusing on coordination. Eight different categories of collaborative activities during online collaboration were found. The students’ joint essays (n = 9) were evaluated as high, moderate and low according to the number of topics, key concepts, and integration of Internet sources in the essays. Coordination profiles were identified by K-means cluster analysis. The students mainly coordinated their collaborative writing through text-related activities, task-related activities as well as social activities. Four distinct coordination profiles were found, showing that the students coordinated their collaborative writing process in different ways. Technical problems seemed to have a negative effect on essay quality.