Wiki-based collaborative learning for colleges specialty English writing education

Specialty English writing education, which aims to help students to train and develop students literacies and skills required for successful communication in English academic and professional contexts, is very important in china university students´ academic studies. As witnessed by the popularity of sociocultural and constructivist approaches in language teaching, collaboration can play a vital role in helping learners to build knowledge and acquire skills. Over past decades although a lot of advanced technologies and learning platforms have been introduced to this field, most of them however just focused on interactive, personalized instruction effectiveness and little attention has been given to examine how collaborative writing can be offered, coordinated and assessed. As one of the most popular web2.0 technologies, wiki is believed to have large potential for fostering collaborative group work and creating learning resources. In this study, a Wiki-based collaborative writing environment for one college specialty English course entitled “E-Commerce Specialty English” was present and practiced. Three important learning strategies including collaboration and knowledge sharing, peer assessment and learning process monitoring were adopted to assist the development of a collaborative writing community. Evaluation results showed that Wiki-based collaborative writing can effectively contribute to students writing participants, facilitate group work and make students pay more attention to readers.