Collaborative
editing to scaffold writing
Allana Taylor, DCI 2, 2016
In this essay, I will set
out to demonstrate how a change initiative involving collaboration and digital
learning had a positive effect on student writing within my class. The purpose
of this initiative was to develop in students the skills and motivation to
independently edit their own writing as supported by their peers. The end goal
is an improvement in writing.
As a teacher, I want students to be having powerful
discussions about their writing in a safe, supportive environment with their
peers, rather that the information just coming from me. These socially
constructed opportunities for learning are more powerful and immediate,
especially when supported by collaborative editing. There area huge number of
benefits I predicted would result from this collaborative writing initiative:
1. The skills of editing would
be developed and reinforced in a social context until they became independent.
(Vygotsky 1978)
2. Published writing would show
more success criteria because time has been spent on effective editing.
3. Writing levels would improve
as students knew what their next steps were and how to edit their own writing.
4. Attitudes to writing would
be more positive as it is no longer so ‘Hard’ with the support of a buddy.
5. Students would see each
other as a source of AKO
support.
6. The teacher would be free
to run more workshops to meet specific student needs.
The only aspects of this initiative easily measurable
given the short time frame were:
1. How many incidents of
editing were completed in the task?
2. What types of editing
were completed?
3. Student attitude to the
innovation in regards to supporting their writing.
Reason for
the initiative:
My class has a strong digital focus, where systems have
been set in place such as students publishing writing on individual blogs for an
authentic audience in the wider community, where teachers, students and parents
write constructive comments that indicated success criteria and give next
learning steps. The issue that has risen is that students fail to go back and
edit their own work, thus ignoring the wealth of editing suggestions they have
already been given.
Many of the errors visible in student ‘blog post’ writing
were in sense, spelling, sentence and also paragraph construction. Student
voice gave some interesting insight to the reasons they failed to go back and
edit their own work.
‘Cause sometimes I can’t
figure out how to do it.’ Ella, Year 4 student.
‘Cause I forget because
I’ve gone onto another story.’ Max, Year 3 student.
‘Because I don’t know
what to fix.’ Tegan, Year 3 student.
The key issues were that students didn’t know where
to start, how to proceed or needed help to be accountable and actually get the
editing done.
A
collaborative plan:
To increase the student ownership of this initiative,
the class was instrumental in brainstorming possible solutions to the
identified needs of supporting the getting started, skills of actually editing
and providing accountability for the completed process. The other criteria were
collaboration and the use of digital learning in the process. Student
suggestions focused on their learning being better with a buddy, a range of
tools to support spelling and a scaffolding tool to remind them of the steps.
I looked at how to set systems of support in place
for my writers. An existing collaborative editing tool
formed an excellent scaffolding support, but the change was in the AKO buddies
editing the work together, based on a collaboratively identified ‘Mission’.
This provided the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ required by Vygotsky for
students to perform at a higher level when they were supported by more able
peers than what they could do independently. Vygotsky suggested that what these
students could do today with scaffolding, they could then do independently in
the future. This was the very thing I was looking for. How could I maximise the
effectiveness of student learning, with only one teacher?
What did it
look like?
During an AKO Conference, the writer identified their
initial target. Both students collaboratively identified the success criteria
achieved in the form of a ‘Medal’ and then determined the ‘Mission’ or next
step challenge. They then carried out that mission together. The ‘Nature of Learning’ article (Dunmont, Istance & Benavides, 2010, pp.
3 & 4) suggests that learning is actively constructed through social
negotiation and that learning is more effective if students feel like they are
in a safe and supportive environment. This social aspect of our learning was a
perfect example of the Māori concept of AKO, where we are all learners and
teachers. It was in this environment that my learners were both supported and
challenged to make their writing better.
How did this simple change meet the needs of my learners?
First, it gave them a reason to be
accountable about actually completing the editing because their buddy was
waiting to complete the task with them. Secondly, the scaffolding sheet
continued to support them in the steps to take in their editing. Thirdly, it
gave students a chance to celebrate what they were doing well, while also
reinforcing their personal writing target. Finally, they collaboratively
identifed the next step for learning in the form of a ‘Mission’ and most
importantly complete the editing together, scaffolded by a more able writer.
This initiative met many of the aspects of
collaboration on the 21st Century Learning Design Collaboration
Rubric of: (21st Century Learning Design, 2013, pp.3-9)
1. Students collaboratively
identify success.
2. Students collaboratively
determine targets.
3. Shared responsibility for
the editing of the text.
4. Collaboratively share
feedback.
5. Writer has overall
ownership of the text.
Digital tool:
We found Google Docs gave a better platform for
collaboration than Blogger or Kidblog as it allowed for multiple users, was
motivating and allowed for easy repeated revisions of the text. The
effectiveness of Google Docs for collaboration was also found by Suwantarathrip
& Wichadee (2014, p.154) in their study of collaborative writing. Another
positive aspect of Google Docs is the commenting tool with which I was able to
add additional constructive comments for writers, which disappeared after the
editing had been completed.
Results:
After a week of writing and collaborative editing, 15
posts
had been published on the class blog and were available for analysis.
The average number of editing changes made within the
posts was 10, while student 7 got confused and posted up their ‘pre-edited’
piece twice. Students 2, and 8 had very few errors in their work, hence the low
number of edits. Students 1, 12, 14 and 15 were struggling writers and showed
much higher levels of editing than the other students.
The majority of the editing focused on adding detail,
using a range of connectives, including punctuation and adding paragraphs.
Number of
edits in each piece: The average number of edits per piece was 10.
|
Student
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
|
Edits
|
54
|
3
|
6
|
4
|
9
|
6
|
0
|
2
|
4
|
6
|
6
|
19
|
6
|
10
|
20
|
Types of
editing used by each student:
(the number of students using this editing not the
occurrences of them within a text)
|
Read for sense
|
2
|
Spelling
|
2
|
|
Capitals
|
5
|
Further punctuation
|
4
|
|
Sentences
|
1
|
Layout
|
2
|
|
Adjectives – detail
|
14
|
Opinion
|
1
|
|
Paragraphs
|
7
|
Person
|
1
|
|
Connectives
|
5
|
Speech marks
|
5
|
|
Sentence construction
|
3
|
Vocabulary
|
1
|
Analysis:
There was a sense of excitement within the class
during our editing times where fourteen students were engaged in rich learning
discussion about their writing with personal collaborative editing coaches. This
was in direct contrast to the normal attitude of students avoiding having to go
back to edit their work. This AKO or Buddy Editing was a supportive environment
where according to ‘The 7 Principles of Learning’, (Dunmont, Istance &
Benavides, 2010, pg 6 & 7) the learners were both actively engaged, their
learning was social, emotions were protected within a supportive environment,
individual needs are both met and challenged and their learning was tracked on
the AKO conference sheet. The only challenge from these principles remaining was
for the teacher to help students make connections between this learning and
other areas of their lives.
Students said that it was much easier to edit their
work with a buddy.
‘My buddy helped me with
the hard editing.’ Ella, Year 4 student.
‘We looked for a ‘Mission’
and did it together.’ Tegan, Year 3
student.
Much more work was completed within a week of writing
and collaborative editing that was normally completed. A total of 15 before and
after posts were published to the blog. This blogging platform was an excellent
way to track progress, celebrate improvement and show how we as a learning
community value the importance of collaborative editing in our writing. Not
only was the class Blogger Blog a good place to publish, as discussed above,
Google Docs gave a great platform for multiple editing of a text, where the
teacher could track student collaborative progress while also adding both encouraging
and constructive comments.
According to the ‘Lean Canvas’ view,
(2015) the unique value of this AKO Conference approach was that there were 26
teachers in our class of 25 students, a perfect example of AKO at work. This
increased the levels of support and scaffolding so every child had 1:1
attention, leaving me as the teacher to run workshops to meet other specific
needs.
The effect of socially creating
knowledge in a scaffolded environment was hugely effective, as could be seen in
the struggling writers making the greatest number of edits to their work with
54, 19, 10 and 20 edits. Those struggling students felt like their learning was
easier using this approach.
‘It was much easier to
edit when I had a buddy to help me’. Ella, Year 4 student.
‘I did more editing with
my buddy that I could do by myself.’ Charlotte, Year 4 student.
With further analysis of the
approacah against the ‘Lean Canvas’ view, (2015) we can see that it took very
little time or effort to adjust an exisiting editing tool and no further
training was required for students to use the tool. It was a sustainable initiative
as it carried no additional time or financial costs, and could be applied to
other subject areas where socially constructing knowledge is valuable. The only
additional time was student editing time – the very thing students had avoided
in the past.
Conclusion:
While this action was small, the
impact on student editing and motivation was large, as noted in the number and
type of editing completed along with the positive student responses. The long
term improvement on writing levels should be significant but would need a
control group and longer time frame in which to gather and analyse data.
As a teacher I have discovered that
it can sometimes be the smallest of changes that make the biggest impact in
student learning. It requires that I continue to reflect and am willing to
apply the lense of educational theory and research to my practice.
Appendix:
AKO Conference Checklist: See
attached image.
References:
Dunmont,
H., Istance, D. & Benavides, F. (2010) The Nature of learning: Using
research to inspire practice. In
Educational Research and Innovation. Centre for Educational Research and
Innovation OECD (pp. 3 – 12).
Lean
Canvas: Downloaded 8/2/2015
Research,
I. (2013) 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics.
In 21st Century Learning Design, (pp. 1 - 44).
Suwantarathp,
O., Wichadee, S. (2014) The effects of Collaborative Writing Activity Using
Google Docs on Students’ Writing Abilities. In Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – TOJET (pp. 148 –
156).
Vygotsky,
L. S, (1978), Interaction between learning and development, in Mind in Society: The Development of Higher
Psychological Processes, pp.
79-91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
