The production of text often takes place in word processing programs such as Word. Collaborative writing can take place using online tools which retain most of the functions offered by classic word processing programs, but allow several users to edit the same document at the same time and share text directly with all parties involved.
By using tools for online writing collaboration in connection with teaching activities, you as a teacher can create a good framework for group work and joint knowledge production. All group members are given the same rights to add, edit and delete content, which promotes equal collaboration and shared ownership among the students.
Collaborating on creating content can be motivating for the students and may encourage them to reflect on their own writing process in comparison to that of other students in the writing collaboration activity.
You may use online writing collaboration in your teaching in many different ways. For instance, browse our list of concrete activities and examples of practice in the right margin of this page, or find inspiration in the following brief examples of more general activities.
Online word processing is an obvious choice for facilitating group work and ensuring that all students can contribute to joint and simultaneous knowledge production. This may be combined with a lecture or take place during the students’ activities between sessions, based on a document created by you with a number of questions for the students to answer.
Online writing collaboration can be useful for students who need to write major assignments in connection with their written exam or as a portfolio assignment. In this case, it is an advantage that students can add comments currently in the same document and create an overview. This can help create more cohesion in an assignment text from start to finish.
Working together, the students can produce an internal wiki-like document with explanations of key concepts, theorists or general topics from the course. This gives all students access to the notes, which may raise their academic level. You as a teacher may give the students topics to take turns to write about in the document in connection with specific teaching sessions. These texts may then be used as a basis for academic discussion in class.
In academic discussion fora such as Brightspace Discussions or Aula, the students can work with short concisely formulated contributions. This can benefit the students’ academic understanding, formulating capacity and argumentation skills. You may use academic discussion in the context of introductory presentation with online discussion.
If you do not know which tools to use for the different activities, or what the differences are between them, you may read more about tools below:
Feedbackfruits is an online platform that structures the feedback process around student involvement. The students give feedback to each other based on some criteria that you as a teacher set. In this way, the students learn to evaluate and reflect on the work of others, as well as to formulate constructive feedback.
Microsoft 365 is Microsoft's software package that includes Word, Powerpoint, Excel and OneNote etc. With Office 365, all your files are available 'in the cloud' and can be shared with others. In addition, you can also collaborate on creating content in documents in real time, just as you know from Google Docs, and data can be shared freely between the various programs in Office 365.
Students and employees of Aarhus University have free access to the software.
You should be careful to not have too many students work on the same document at the same time, as this may make the document slow. It may also be difficult to estimate how many students are contributing at the same time. As a teacher, you may therefore create different documents for the different groups, create a shared editable file in OneDrive or assign time-delayed tasks for the groups. Alternatively, you may mark clearly where the students should type their responses.
Also consider what the students should gain from the collaboration, and in this connection: what your role as a teacher is in the documents. OneDrive has a “version history” which tells you exactly who has written what. This is useful if an exam or other similar situation requires an overview of the amount of work carried out by each individual student.
Please contact the editors at AU Educate if you have any questions about the content of the platform or if you need consultation on your teaching from one of the many skilled professionals at the Centre for Educational Development.
