A Collective Case Study of Online Interaction Patterns in Text Revisions

Learning happens through interaction with others. The purpose of this study is to investigate how online interaction patterns affect students’ text revisions. As a sample, 25 undergraduate students were recruited to play multiple roles as writers, editors, and commentators in online text revisons. In playing different roles, they chose to read peer writers’ texts, edit peer writers’ errors, evaluate peer editors’ suggestions and corrections, and finally rewrite their own texts. Students’ choices of actions in the system to interact with their peers for the common goal of text improvement were identified as interaction patterns in this study. Results of this study revealed significant differences in students’ interaction patterns and their final texts. The interaction pattern of students who made both local (grammatical corrections) and global (the development, organization, and style of texts) revisions was an extensive and reciprocal process. The interaction pattern of students who made only local revisions was almost a one-way process. Based on these interaction patterns, we suggest that teachers encourage low-participating students to engage in interactions with their peers by showing the benefits of peers’ text revisions in the final drafts. Providing necessary assistance and guidance to low-participating students is essential, given their difficulties in writing texts, editing peer writers’ texts, and evaluating peer editors’ suggestions.

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