The Effect of Face-to-Face and non-Face-to-Face Synchronously Collaborative Writing Environment on Student Engagement and Academic Performance

Abstract

Collaborative Writing (CW) tools such as Google Docs provide an efficient way for students to perform collaborative writing tasks. This research is based on a novel CW tool called Cooperpad, with a group awareness functionality, which continuously gathers group members' writing behaviour, analyzes and visualize their engagement intensity for group members to compare their participation with that of others. The comparative experiment is carried out in two different online learning environments: face-to-face and non-face-to-face, with an experimental group (N = 72) and a control group (N = 48). Through systematic data and post-test design we have examined in which environment the students showed more engagement in the group-writing task. The results showed that Cooperpad writing system is more helpful to enhance the student engagement and improve students’ academic performance on certain levels in face-to-face online learning environment compared with non-face-to-face. Moreover, the student engagement was positively correlated to the academic performance. Students have a high degree of the system, which has a positive promoting effect on learning initiative and teamwork ability.