Collaborative writing: roles in co-authorship and digital resources used

Abstract

This case study addresses two main objectives: on the one hand, to analyse what roles the university students play when collaboratively writing a report online and, on the other hand, to explore what digital resources they use during their online collaborative writing process. The study was carried out with first-year students of the Human Biology degree. The data were collected by taking notes during a non-participant observation, by recording the writing process with the Camtasia application and by recording the history of Google Docs. The findings made it visible how the participants took over different roles during different phases of the text composition process. In addition, the students used the digital tools during the collaborative writing in order to a) search for information on varied websites, including non-specialized ones; b) paraphrase the information from the sources consulted, and c) write comments in Google Docs to interact with peers and, thus, manage the interaction. These results imply that the assessment of learning must include reflection on both procedures and attitudes that students are expected to learn and apply.