Online collaborative learning on an

ESL teacher education programme

Richard Cullen, John Kullman, and Carol Wild

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This article examines the processes and potential benefits of online
collaborative learning through a qualitative analysis of the postings made
by a group of Malaysian student teachers on an assessed wiki-based
collaborative writing project, completed over a period of nine weeks as
part of a Bachelor of Education in Teaching English as a Second Language
programme in the UK. Three categories of ‘talk’ are identified and
exemplified through the analysis: social talk, planning talk, and language
talk, with the findings showing high levels of collaborative behaviour
during completion of the task, marked by interactivity, mutual respect,
and interdependence; this helped develop a strong sense of a ‘community
of practice’ within the group and a supportive, goal-oriented learning
environment. There was also some, but less conclusive, evidence of processes
of co-construction of learning and collective scaffolding. The article ends
with a discussion of the implications for online collaborative task design and
implementation in ESL teacher education contexts.

Introduction There have been numerous studies over the past 15 years into the use
of collaborative learning on English language teaching and teacher
education programmes, particularly with the advent of technologies
for online collaboration. While many of these studies have been
generally positive about the learning benefits of such collaboration
(Arnold and Ducate 2006; Kessler 2009; Yang 2009) in areas such
as the enhancement of critical reflection, development of autonomy,
and increased attention to accuracy in written work, other studies have
been more circumspect. Judd, Kennedy, and Cropper (2010: 341),
for example, reported on student participation in a wiki-based shared
writing task and found little evidence of collaboration ‘despite adopting
a learning design which was intended to support it’, and Hathorn and
Ingram (2002: 344), in a comparison of results on a computer-mediated
group writing task, found that ‘the best products were created by the
least collaborative groups’. In their conclusions, the need to support
online collaborative learning tasks with robust, formal assessment
and active teacher encouragement was noted. In this article, we report
on a wiki-based collaborative writing project undertaken by a group
of Malaysian student teachers following a BEd TESL (Bachelor of
Education Teaching English as a Second Language) programme in the

ELT Journal Volume 67/4 October 2013; doi:10.1093/elt/cct032  425

© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Advance Access publication June 18, 2013
 UK. Using qualitative data from their contributions to the wiki, we will
attempt to analyse the processes and outcomes of the activity, assessing
both the learning benefits and possible shortcomings and drawing
implications for online collaborative task design and pedagogy.

Theoretical bases The practice of collaborative learning, defined with deliberate

for collaborative broadness by Dillenbourg (1999: 1) as ‘a situation where two or
learning more people learn or attempt to learn something together’, has
strong support from a range of theoretical perspectives including
motivation, cognition, and social cohesion (Slavin 1995). In the context
of this particular collaborative writing project, we focus on two such

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perspectives. The first, at the level of cognition, is sociocultural theory,
deriving from the work of Vygotsky (1978), which sees learning as a
process of socialization and acculturation through interaction with
more knowledgeable others in pursuit of a learning goal. Central
to this process is the belief that knowledge and understanding are
co-constructed through interaction, and through the practice of
scaffolding, whereby the learner’s understandings and attempts to
express these in words are supported and assisted through dialogue. In
student–student group writing tasks, this process is sometimes referred
to as ‘collective scaffolding’ (Donato 1994).

The second theoretical perspective, at the level of social cohesion, derives

from the work of Lave and Wenger (1991), for whom the development
of competences through social learning activities is an important factor
in successful induction into a community of practice and the acquisition
of a shared professional discourse. Viewed from this perspective,
and in the context of our student teachers from Malaysia, working
collaboratively with peers helps create the social relationships that are
vital to this long-term process of induction and to the construction of
professional identity. Indeed, Singh and Richards (2006: 156) argue that
it is the creation of these social relationships in the course room that
‘conditions participants’ relative success in learning’. As this paper will
show, social relationships may equally be created outside the physical
confines of the course room through online discussion.
The task The task used in this study was taken from a module entitled Language
Awareness that the student teachers studied in their first year of
the BEd TESL programme. Twelve groups of four to five students
completed the task and, from start to finish, they worked on it for a total
of nine weeks.

The task was in two parts: the first was a Video Dictionary Entry task
in which the students, working in groups of four or five, selected a
word or phrase likely to be useful for lower secondary school learners
in Malaysia. They then designed, acted out, and shot a short video clip
illustrating the meaning of the word or phrase in a context of their
choosing. They then edited the clip using Movie Maker, a free basic
video editing software program chosen for its ease of use and wide
availability, which encouraged multimodal learning by utilizing words,
sounds, images, and movement.

426 Richard Cullen et al.

 The second part of the task was an assessed 800-word collaborative
writing task, in which each group of students wrote a reflective
commentary for their Video Dictionary Entry, discussing the rationale
for their choice of entry, its suitability for lower secondary school
students, and the principles behind the design of the video clip and the
way it was crafted to maximize its effectiveness. For this task, the wiki
tool was considered particularly suitable because of its editing facility.
As Godwin-Jones (2003: 15) points out, wikis ‘provide an excellent
collaborative environment, since changes are logged along with
identification of the author’.
Analysing the data This article is an analysis of the interactions posted by one of the groups

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involved in this task. This group, consisting of five members, four
female and one male, provides examples of typical use of the wiki by all
the groups involved.

We wanted to investigate evidence of collaborative behaviour and

processes of learning from the contributions and responses that were
posted by the students on the wiki during the completion of the task.
We thus adopted a qualitative methodology for analysing the data as we
were primarily interested in what they wrote and how they responded
to each other’s contributions, rather than how much they wrote or how
often each member posted a contribution on to the wiki. However, it
would certainly be noticeable and worthy of comment if one or more of
the group failed to engage in the task.
We considered that it should be fairly straightforward to find examples
of collaborative behaviour from the data; the interest was more in
ways in which this collaboration was expressed and regulated within
the group to achieve the fulfilment of the task. On the other hand,
finding evidence of collaborative learning would be more challenging,
since learning is an internal process and much more difficult to
demonstrate through an analysis of collaborative talk. It would not be
enough to deduce that learning was taking place just because there was
a lot of collaboration. We would need to find in the data examples of
interaction that, in the words of Dillenbourg (op.cit.: 5), ‘generates extra
activities (explanation, disagreement, mutual regulation …)’, which
in turn ‘trigger extra cognitive mechanisms (knowledge elicitation,
internalization, reduced cognitive load …)’.
In our analysis of the interaction data, a two-level coding procedure
was adopted, following Dörnyei (2006). At the first level of coding, the
data from the selected group, which ran to 21 A4 pages of script and
which formed the focus this study, were coded for the communicative
functions that the different postings appeared to display, for example
‘Making contact (MC)’, ‘Making suggestions for a plan of action
(S)’, and ‘Responding to suggestions (RS)’. At the second level of
coding, which attempted to capture the broader patterns and ‘abstract
commonalities’ in the data (ibid.: 252), these initial codes were grouped
into larger categories of talk, which the different descriptors seemed to
share. Through this process, we identified three broad categories from
the data of the selected group (which are explained below):

Online collaborative learning 427

 ■■ social talk
■■ planning talk
■■ language talk.
We then analysed the data from the other groups to test how far these
categories applied across the wider cohort. Through this process we
found that two of the categories, social talk and planning talk, were
evident and similarly used across all 12 group wikis. The category
language talk was present in 7 of the 12 group wikis. In the remaining
five groups, language talk appeared to take place in other collaborative
forums such as Facebook, email, and face-to-face discussions.

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These three categories describe what seem to have been the main
purposes of an individual’s particular contribution, or part of a
contribution, and, while there is a certain amount of overlap between
them, we found that they provided a useful framework for analysing
how online collaborative learning took place and for illustrating the
benefits, as well as some of the potential shortcomings, of this kind of
learning task.
Social talk This category encompasses the use of affective language to express
emotions, show awareness of the other participants, and establish
group cohesion. This is what Arnold and Ducate term ‘social presence’
in their study (op.cit.: 42). In Extract 1, the group members1 are posting
ideas for selecting their word or phrase:

Extract 1

S1: guys! we shud discuss our word. i suggest the word spicy! we

can act like in mc donalds! spicy or original? hehe.
S2: Interesting! Your idea is brilliant Ana! Well done. However, we
should consider the benefits of the word chosen towards to the
students. Our target is lower secondary school learners (form
1–3). By the way, it is not necessary a word, we can also use a
phrase. I suggest we use an idiom =p
S3: An idiom is not bad. What do you have on mind? Maybe a
common idiom that we use in our everyday lives so the students
can apply in their lives …
S1: as fast as lightning! this shud be fun. we could use superhero
like superman to be an example. it relates to real life also as we
can use the idioms like a teacher asked the student to get her
books in the car and we do the action as fast as lightning …
In these exchanges, we can see social presence, for example in S1’s use
of ‘guys’ as a greeting and her attempt at humour (‘hehe’), and S2’s
strong positive affirmation of S1’s suggestion, his use of her name
(‘Ana’), and the emoticon (‘=p’ for ‘tongue out’, i.e. cheeky, playful).
Social talk of this nature is clearly important for establishing a friendly,
positive atmosphere in which collaborative behaviour can flourish,
especially when the collaboration is conducted online, rather than
face-to-face. This collaborative environment is further reinforced by the

428 Richard Cullen et al.

 interactivity of the exchanges, through the use of both direct questions
(‘What do you have in mind?) and the language of polite, tentative
suggestions, particularly from S3 and S1. From the point of view of
building a team in which the members can work together to achieve
common goals, this kind of polite social language is important. It not
only helps to establish norms of interactive online behaviour but also
promotes engagement with the task itself.

Social presence is also very evident in the supportive and encouraging

messages of thanks and congratulations that the group members
habitually post to one another. For example, the following were

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among a number of messages posted during the planning and making
of the video clip, expressing a strong sense of accomplishment
and group solidarity. The use of informal, texting language is also
noteworthy:
■■ good work for today guys! well done!
■■ Guys, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the work
that was accomplished tonight.
■■ we’re DONE. omg! hopefully, ours is the cutest. haha!!
Planning talk Planning talk occurred when the participants were making suggestions
for the choice of phrase (as we have seen above), planning the content
of the video clip, and planning the structure of the reflective essay. It
also included regulatory talk, with different group members assuming
leadership roles and allocating duties to each other. In the context of a
task that involved the production of a video clip and an assessed piece
of writing, it was perhaps not surprising to find a great deal of the
interaction included this kind of talk. The following extract (Extract 2) is
an example of the group self-regulating the way the writing task would
be organized, with one participant taking the lead, and the others, as
it transpired, happy to comply. It indicates a strong sense of ‘positive
interdependence’ within the group, which, as McCafferty, Jacobs, and
Iddings (2006) argue, is a precondition of successful collaborative
learning.

Extract 2

S2: Yes ... that’s a good idea, Ros. Since you have pointed out an
idea for our reflection, I have come out with a task division for
everyone. Hope we can do as good as we can as a group. For Faz,
I hope you can elaborate more on the choice of our entry and
its suitability. For Ana, if possible, try to find some information
regarding lexical and grammatical aspect of our entry. For Ros,
may be u can think about what we should say in the introduction
and conclusion, while I will think about the definition and the
phonological aspect … how about our final video, Anwar?

Planning talk is important for developing the metacognitive skills the

students will need for successful completion of the task, as well as
the communication skills they will need in order to become effective
members of the professional community of practice they are preparing

Online collaborative learning 429

 to join. Similarly, in many cases, planning talk provided a forum for
students to share their ideas and insights about language and pedagogy,
and thus potentially to contribute to the process of co-constructing
understanding and knowledge within the group as a whole. This can be
seen in Extracts 3 and 4, taken from the discussion about the choice of
idiom. In Extract 3, the participant (S3) is making her own suggestion,
prior to S1’s counter-suggestion of ‘as fast as lightning’ (later changed
to ‘quick’).

Extract 3

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S3: Or we can choose an idiom that provides some moral lesson.
For instance, the idiom ‘slip of the tongue’. We can show the
consequences of someone accidentally saying something he or
she should not have said. Or the idiom ‘blood is thicker than
water’, illustrating the importance of family ties. How about a
verb? since verb shows action, it is beneficial to some students
who are visual learners.
In Extract 4, taken from the point at which the group have agreed on
the choice of idiom, S1 shares her understanding about the idiom,
and an exchange of comments about its suitability for lower secondary
school learners in Malaysia follows:

Extract 4

S1: ifound this. lots of simple idiom in here: www.english-idioms.net/

wm/idiom/cgi.
btw, there is also as quick as a wink means very quickly. same
thing as fast as lightning i think.
S2: btw, this is the link for our the idiom definition http://
dictionaries.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=quick*2+0&dict=I’
S4: i guess our proverb is compatible for malaysian secondary
school students. wht d u think?
S5: yes, i think it is suitable. the words ‘quick’ and ‘lightning’ are both
common words, and because students know that lightning appears
only for a split second, they can associate ‘quick’ with ‘lightning’.
There seems to be further evidence here of co-construction of
understanding, with the two web links providing a form of scaffolding:
it was interesting to note that after S2’s posting, the idiom changes to
‘as quick as lightning’, instead of ‘as fast as lightning’.

Language talk The third category comprises talk about language and appropriate and
inappropriate English usage. This section is reserved for the way the
students focused on form and content when giving feedback on each
other’s work in the reflective writing task, even though, as the extracts
above show, language talk also took place when they were planning
the Video Dictionary Entry and were sharing knowledge about idioms.
Interestingly, the participants chose not to use the facility within the

430 Richard Cullen et al.

 wiki tool to edit each other’s work directly, but rather continued to use it
as a discussion board to post their feedback on. This may be connected
to their decision to divide the writing task up by assigning a paragraph
to each individual. They may well have felt that it was more considerate
to the writer to suggest possible corrections and improvements as part
of a discussion rather than to make them directly on to the text. In the
following extract (Extract 5), S4 has posted her paragraph on the wiki
and then, in Extract 6, S5 posts her comment on the paragraph:

Extract 5: as quick as lightning

According to Cambridge Dictionary, ‘as quick as lightning’ means the

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action that takes place is extremely quickly. In order to impart the proper
pronunciation to the students, the word is dissected phonologically:
/ As / quick / as / lightning /
æzˈ kwɪkˈ æzˈ laɪtnɪŋ
The phonemic transcription provided in the video helps students to
distinguish the various speech sounds and by recognizing it, students
improve their pronunciation. Some students may not realize the
importance of the transcription because it is not stressed much in
Malaysia. By presenting the phonemic transcription directly below
the simile and with the voiceover, students will realize how the script
help to pronounce and employ it in their future vocabulary learning.

Extract 6

S5: Faz, I think I would to suggest [sic] something for ur part.

Firstly, I do think that we need to include the citation for
the Cambridge Dictionary such as year which is in the
bracket. Secondly, for this sentence, ‘According to Cambridge
Dictionary, “as quick as lightning” means the action that takes
place is extremely quickly’, I dont think the word ‘extremely’
is suitable to put there. How about if we change it to ‘Very
quickly’?? Lastly, is about this sentence ‘students will realize
how the script help to pronounce and employ it in their future
vocabulary learning’, i think we should make the word ‘help’
to singular as the subject ‘script’ is singular. So, the sentence
should be like this ‘students will realize how the script helps to
pronounce and employ it in their future vocabulary learning’.
This kind of elaborated commentary, couched in the language of polite
suggestions (‘I would to suggest …’, ‘I do think we need …’, ‘How about
…’, ‘I think we should …’), and frequently including explanations for
their suggested revisions, is typical of the way the group members
responded to each other’s draft paragraphs. This approach is not simply
more respectful to the authors, but as a learning exercise, it is clearly
more productive for both parties: the ‘editor’ who tries to justify and
articulate the reasons for her revisions and the writer of the original
paragraph who reads them. Furthermore, what they are doing here is a
form of preparation for their future roles as secondary school English

Online collaborative learning 431

 teachers, rehearsing the kind of grammatical explanations they will
need to draw upon when responding to their own students’ errors. It is
as if, even at this early stage in their course, they are beginning to adopt
the professional identities they will grow into and are reinforcing these
through their interactions with one another.

Interestingly, there are no examples in the data of the participants

questioning or reflecting on the comments and suggested revisions
to their work. In the extract above, for example, S4 did not respond to
S5, either by asking why ‘very quickly’ would be more suitable than
‘extremely quickly’, or by saying why she agreed with the suggestion. The

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response was always to simply thank their classmates for the revisions
and then put up a revised paragraph on the wiki incorporating all the
suggestions. It seemed that the participants were more concerned with
preserving the spirit of cooperation that they had built up during the
course of the task than with risking the disruption of the harmony within
the group by raising questions on relatively small points of grammar or
lexical choice. In most cases, too, the revisions were an improvement on
the original paragraph (in the judgment of this paper’s authors).
Discussion and It is apparent from our analysis of the data that there was a very high
implications level of collaborative behaviour within the group, which was spread
equally among all five group members. This was demonstrated through
the interactivity of the postings; the informal social talk, reminiscent
of text messaging, used as the medium of communication; and the
respect they showed one another when making and responding to
suggestions. There were clear social benefits for the participants in
terms of the creation of social relationships that, as Singh and Richards
(2006) argued, condition success in learning, and the development
of teamwork skills which are so essential for their future roles as
teachers. The activity was also highly supportive of the development
of metacognitive skills through the elaborate planning involved in the
task fulfilment and of autonomous learning, with the group members
dependent entirely on each other for the successful completion of the
task with minimum intervention from the teacher.

In terms of the process of learning through collaboration, there was some

evidence of sharing and co-constructing knowledge about language at
different stages of the process, although there was little overt evidence
of the participants actively engaging with the corrections suggested by
their peers in the collaborative writing stage or of the kind of collective
scaffolding characterized by negotiation of form, found in transcripts of
face-to-face collaboration on writing tasks, for example Donato (1994) and
Storch (1998). Nevertheless, the benefits of online discussion for the use
and development of language skills, including the use of metalanguage to
explain their proposed revisions, were clear and substantial. The activity
required and encouraged the students not just to articulate and share their
understandings but to do so in English, whereas in a face-to-face discussion,
the temptation would have been to do this in their mother tongue.
So, what implications can be drawn from this study for the practice
of online collaborative tasks for language teacher education more

432 Richard Cullen et al.

 generally? Firstly, engagement with the task itself is crucial. In this
case, the planning and production of a video clip provided intrinsic
motivation for the students, which was heightened by the competitive
element involved. Secondly, formal assessment of the writing task,
with one mark being awarded for the whole group, reinforced positive
interdependence and helped ensure that everyone participated and
took it seriously. The lack of formal assessment has been noted as
a contributory factor to a lack of collaboration in previous studies
(cf. Judd, Kennedy, and Cropper op.cit.). Thirdly, the dynamic of
the group is clearly important, and careful consideration needs to be
given to group size. Although wiki technology potentially allows for

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multiple users to participate, the larger the group, the more difficult
it is for them to establish the social relationships and equal levels of
participation that have been hallmarks of this data, drawn from a group
of five. Fourthly, while the technology itself needs to be appropriate for
the task, it is perhaps more important that the participants have control
over it and use it to suit their own purposes. It was striking in this study
how the participants chose not to use the wiki direct editing facility but
to continue to use it as a discussion board, with apparently beneficial
effects. Equally, while outside the scope of this study, some groups
chose to use alternative technologies (Facebook and email) or face-to-
face collaboration to achieve certain aspects of the task, such as peer
feedback on form (language talk).
Finally, it is notable that the teacher adopted a deliberately non-
interventionist role in this task in order to encourage group
interdependence, and to ensure assessment conditions were the
same for each group. This, however, is not to suggest that this should
always be the case. A more active participatory online role is often
appropriate, provided that it does not become intrusive and detrimental
to intra-group collaboration. In this particular task, judicious teacher
intervention might have been appropriate at selected points, for
example to encourage the students to engage more fully with the
correction process, thereby facilitating a deeper co-construction of
knowledge by the group.
Conclusion The emergence and rapid development of online technologies over
the past 20 years has created exciting possibilities for collaborative
learning, possibilities that will inevitably go on expanding. The study
presented here shows how some of these possibilities can be utilized
with very beneficial outcomes for social learning. However, no
technology guarantees collaboration, and collaboration in itself does
not guarantee learning. The technology, in this case a wiki, can provide
a collaborative environment, but additional components relating to the
design, implementation, and assessment of the task need to be in place
to incentivize collaboration, and guidance and sensitive interventions
from the teacher may also be needed, not just to maintain levels of
collaboration but to scaffold and support learning processes.

Final version received April 2013

Online collaborative learning 433

Note
1 All the names of the participants have been
changed to protect anonymity.
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The authors
Richard Cullen is Head of the Department of
English and Language Studies at Canterbury
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Christ Church University, UK, and teaches
on the BEd TESL programme for Malaysian
student teachers. His research interests
include classroom discourse, teacher
development, and the teaching and learning of
grammar, with a particular interest in spoken
grammar. He has worked for teacher education
and curriculum development projects in Egypt,
Bangladesh, Tanzania, and Palestine, and has
also taught and trained teachers in Nepal and
Greece.
Email: richard.cullen@canterbury.ac.uk
John Kullman is a Principal Lecturer in English
and Language Studies at Canterbury Christ
Church University, UK, where he directs the
BEd TESL programme for Malaysian student
teachers. His research interests include
intercultural communication, cultural aspects
of language teaching and learning, mentoring,
and teacher development. He has worked on
teacher education and curriculum development
projects in Malaysia, Mexico, Palestine, Hungary,
Argentina, and Saudi Arabia.
Email: john.kullman@canterbury.ac.uk
Carol Wild is a Senior Lecturer in the English
and Language Studies Department at Canterbury
Christ Church University, UK, and teaches on
the BEd TESL programme for Malaysian student
teachers. Her research interests include the use
of technology in the language classroom and
lexical approaches to language learning. She
has been involved in curriculum development
projects in Palestine and Bangladesh and teacher
development workshops on the use of technology
in teaching and learning.
Email: carol.wild@canterbury.ac.uk