Yliopisto-opiskelijoiden yhteisöllinen kirjoittaminen kasvokkain ja verkossa

Abstract

This study investigated university students’ face-to-face and online collaborative writing. The aims were to clarify how university students construct knowledge during collaborative writing and how they coordinate collaborative writing online. Participants were enrolled in a course on educational psychology focusing on developmental and learning theories through reading, writing, and discussion. This study comprised three sub-studies. In sub-studies 1 and 2, 21 students wrote an essay collaboratively face-to-face in small groups. The data in these two sub-studies consisted of students’ individual summaries (n = 21) of the core ideas of the theories presented in the course textbook, audio-recorded group discussions (n = 6) and joint essays (n = 6). In sub-study 1, the group discussions were classified into five categories based on the phases of writing. In sub-study 2, the sentences in the joint essays were compared with the students’ individual summaries and the course textbook. The origin of each sentence was then identified in the group discussions and the students’ knowledge construction analysed. In sub-study 3, 28 students wrote a summary of developmental theories in small groups as an online task. The data consisted of students’ comments related to their joint task (n = 583) and their joint essays (n = 9). The students’ comments were classified into categories of coordination and their joint summaries were classified by quality. The data of all three sub-studies were quantified and analysed using statistical tests. The most frequently discussed topics were on the translation and content of the source texts. While, in general, disagreement or conflict during the joint writing task was rare, some disagreement was observed when the students were reformulating sentences. In their collaborative interaction, they often completed each other’s ideas and asked each other questions. They mainly coordinated their collaborative writing through text- and task-related as well as social activities. The results showed that high-level interaction, such as exchanging ideas and perspectives and asking thought-provoking questions, promoted students’ knowledge construction. While coordination did not affect the quality of the essays, online technical problems had a negative effect on essay quality. Collaborative writing tasks which combined reading, writing, and discussion in small groups seem to promote students’ learning.