Collaboration Starts with an Idea

Image credit: Pixabay 

How can you create a learner-friendly environment to improve your students' writing skills in online classes? A big question, isn't it? 🤷‍♀️🤔

If you ask this questions to teachers in different contexts, most of them will say: " let your students work together". By this answer, they simply touch on the Vygotskian Social Constructivism theory (1978) from which Collaborative Learning approach was derived. Collaborative learning approach supports the salient concept of student-centered classroom where the teacher helps in scaffolding, guiding and facilitating steps. Working on learners' metacognitive learning and their mutual accountability is a key condition for collaborative learning. That's impressive, however it is problematic when we think about online learning and about a productive skill like writing. 👌

So, if you seek to promote your students' (especially adults) writing skills using cooperative learning approach in online learning, this post is your treasure to uncover. ✨🎁🎁

After the pandemic, I felt confused about how I can improve my students' writing via online classes. So after searching and asking my friends, I thought about the following steps that formed a roadmap to guide me and you:

1- We need a platform to help students collaborate in the brainstorming stage;

2- We should take them to a journey of writing the first draft and giving feedback to each other;

And

3- Finally, they need to see their achievement of writing collaboratively.

1- Brainstorming via Mindmeister: 

Advantages:

Mindmeister is a good tool that your students can use for brainstorming for the following reasons:

• School and university students can use it.
  
• If your students are working on their own, they can create their own account and autonomously work.
  
• Whatever the number of students you have, you can devise a mind map for up to 200 students or one for each small group. It's your call then!
  
• Mind mapping includes attaching photos, audios and videos; not only written texts.
• They can use colors, icons and emojis.
• They can choose between maps, charts and lists to brainstorm, using different themes.
• Last but not the least, they can invite their friends and share their mind maps. 

Image credit: Mindmeister.com

Image credit: Mindmeister.com

Limitations:

The two main limitations of Mindmeister are:

• It is not a suitable tool for drafting and writing an essay.
• You have to subscribe in case you would like to secure back-ups, export pdf files or have teams within teams.

Potential solutions: 

For subscription, I think that it is affordable as the monthly plans start from 5 to 13 £. Instead, you can still use the free account and use other platform that serves other writing sub-skills. Guess what's it? 😎😉

2- Using Padlet for writing the first draft

Advantages:

On the other hand, I think that another platform such as Padlet can help your students create their first draft and comment on each others' drafts as well. I always use Padlet  with my students in different writing tasks, such as writing a body paragraph, free writing, portfolio assessment tasks,..etc. My students always think that Padlet is a magical tool that help them improve their writing and peer-assessment skills. The following photo is an example a writing activity I had in an online class with my upper-intermediate students.

Image credit: Padlet.com

Limitation: 

This paragraph, you see in the image, gives a vivid example on using Padlet for writing a paragraph in a resume with adult students. Although you can use the free account, Padlet's limitation is the subscription plan. It is still affordable as it is from 6 to 9 £ per month, otherwise you should not have more than 5 Padlets on your account.

As the previous platforms give you ideas about how you can help your students in online classes to collaboratively brainstorm and write their drafts, the following video will take you in a tour through which you can help your learners complete their writing to its final steps.

In this video, I interviewed my friend Yomna Youssef, an academic coordinator and an experienced ESL instructor who works in different reputable universities and educational institutions in Egypt, such as, CCCS- BUE, SCE- AUC and Cairo University. Yomna will share with us her experience with online writing classes using Google apps.

As usual, waiting for your comments and threads of discussion about Yo/umnas' plan for better online writing classroom 😂😉. 

And if you are thinking about improving your students' speaking skills collaboratively in online classes, my coming post is for you 👈.

You can also find in the following links some tutorials on using Mindmeister, Padlet, Google Doc. and Jamboard.