To the Antipodes and back again

Before lunch (Thursday) we could hear about a wiki pilot project between Australian and Italian students. The aims were to promote online collaboration and foster development of linguistic skills, explore contemporary youth issues and research intercultural learning online. There were three members of the project: Suzanne Cloke, Matthew Absalom and Andrea Rizzi. The whole project seemed very interesting since the three had adapted different course layout. Even though students were a bit unfamiliar with the technology at first, they were soon engaged in the wiki. Students claimed that their communication and writing skills improved by using it.

One of the issues brought up, the assessment aspect,which has been discussed a few times today is how to assess online collaboration when used in language learning settings. The three project members applied different ways: no assessment (and the students didn’t have any problem of getting interaction going)- some assessment – to full assessment.