Using realtime writing technology to enable continuous

formative evaluation of collaborative knowledge work

Brian McNely and Paul Gestwicki
Departments of English and Computer Science
Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA
Writing the Wave
Our work explores the affordances and opportunities for deploying Google
Wave as an enabling technology that fosters robust peer­review, collaborative
writing, the participation of multiple stakeholders (students, instructors, and
relevant community members) and the formative evaluation of student work.
Funded by an Innovation Grant from Ball State University's Emerging Media
Initiative, our project is currently in its beginning stages. We believe we have
developed a theoretical and pedagogical framework that will allow both the
technical manipulation of Wave features such as extensions and robots, and
the testing of those features in the classroom within the context of a forthcoming
qualitative study.
Our project contends that contemporary higher education should prepare
students for collaborative knowledge work—the kinds of work heavily mediated
by computer­supported environments—empowering them to work with
information that continually circulates across disciplinary and professional
domains. We observe that much of that work is instantiated in and through
writing activities, and these activities have long been seen as explicitly
epistemic, fostering new knowledge through the ongoing negotiation of
provisional knowledge. However, formative evaluation—through both peer and
expert review—can be challenging in educational environments that employ a
knowledge work approach because collaborations have traditionally occurred

Sample User Story

across multiple communication channels and have often been ephemeral. Our
project describes ongoing research with Google Wave as an enabling
Among the many use cases we envision for student knowledge work in Wave, technology for surfacing, tracing, and visualizing knowledge work and peer
collaborative research and writing with community involvement is especially review in collaborative learning environments, with the goal of fostering more
trenchant. Take the following collaborative white paper assignment typical in meaningful student metacognition and modeling practices.
our Professional Writing course, for example:
Scott and Jean are students working collaboratively on a small­scale, two­
week research project exploring the specific practices surrounding a community
member's (Bobby) use of a new iPad. This is Scott and Jean's first experience
working directly with a research participant; using wave, they work together to
develop and implement interview questions, store notes from observations of
Bobby's use of the iPad, and discuss when and how to invoke outside sources
alongside their primary research when writing up their final white papers.
Throughout this process of contextual inquiry, Wave allows the direct
participation of the research subject Bobby. Further, many of the interactions
that might have previously taken place across production channels (email,
wikis, text editors, transcriptions) can be collected and continually referenced
within Wave. Scott and Jean can not only provide feedback to each other
through a variety of media collected in the wave, but they can easily deploy
member checks with Bobby throughout the process, thus validating their
research claims by incorporating his direct involvement and feedback.
Most importantly, however, is the ability for the instructor to engage Scott,
Jean, and Bobby throughout the process. Our preliminary wave visualizations,
for example, can allow an instructor to obtain a palatable update of progress,
allowing them to make more productive pedagogical interventions during, rather
than after, the construction of knowledge.
System Components
­ Users interact with the system exclusively through the Web Browser.
­ Collaboration takes place in a Wave Client, such as Google's Wave Client.
­ All users can access interactive Web­based WtW Visualizations.
­ The WtW Robot participates in a Wave, collecting and recording interactions.

Current status
­ The WtW Gadget can be embedded directly into a Wave for contextual
summary data.
­ Established the fundamental theoretical foundation based on contemporary ­ WtW Web Services provide access to the Data Store through AppEngine.
theories of collaborative knowledge work and contributing student pedagogies.
­ Developed a software prototype that provides a platform for experimentation.

Future Work For more information

­ Thorough analysis of Wave use cases to identify epistemic implications of Contact bjmcnely@bsu.edu or pvgestwicki@bsu.edu.
common usage scenarios. Additional information can be found on the project Web site at
­ Design and evaluation of effective contextual information visualization http://sites.google.com/sites/writingthewaveproject.
techniques.