Online collaborative learning on an ESL teacher education programme

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.