Assessing Group Interactions Online: Students' perspectives

Abstract

The purpose of the following article is to discuss the integration of computermediated communication into a French writing course and to report on theassessment methodology used in order to gather students’ perspectives. Theonline course component was introduced in the Fall of 2003 in order toenhance students’ learning by introducing collaborative writing projects, andas a result, to encourage them to write on a regular basis. The intent of thenew pedagogical paradigm was to create a student-centred environment wheresocio-constructivist and cognitive principles would be infused into the teachingof French writing (L2 setting). A design experiment methodology based onstudents’ perspectives was used to continuously test and refine the onlinecomponent of the course. This process assessment helped in the development ofour final course model and tested the quality of our teaching.