Chiu-Pin Lin｜Graduate Institute of eLearning Technology, National Hsinchu University of Education, Taiwan｜chiupin.lin@gmail.com
Yuan-Lin Sung｜Shi-Hsing Elementary School, Hsinchu County, Taiwan｜yuanlin.sung@gmail.com
Lung-Hsiang Wong｜Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Education, Singapore｜lhwong.acad@gmail.com
▌Abstract
The aim of this study is investigate the learning effect of a collaborative writing approach for elementary school students, mediated by a computer-assisted collaborative learning tool. Sixty 11-year-old students from two 5th grade classes participated in the study. To increase students’ interest and proficiency in Chinese essay writing, we adopted and adapted a collaborative writing model, namely, VSPOW (Vocabularies → Sentences → Paragraphs → Outlines → essay Writing) with the aid of the networked system of Group Scribbles running on Tablet PCs for students to work in collaboration in writing argumentative essays. Through the emergent brainstorming and peer coaching processes that resulted in the pooling of rich vocabularies and corpus, and face-to-face discussions, the students’ motivation in and quality of writing had been enhanced.
Keywords: Essay Writing, Collaborative Learning, VSPOW, Group Scribbles