Validating Wikis (and other Collaborative Writing Tools)

Collaborative writing tools have been used widely in professional and academic organizations for many years. Yet, there has not been much work to improve screen reader access in mainstream collaborative writing tools. This severely affects the way people with vision impairments collaborate in ability-diverse teams. As a step toward addressing this issue, the present article aims at improving screen reader representation of collaborative features such as comments and track changes (i.e., suggested edits). Building on our formative interviews with 20 academics and professionals with vision impairments, we developed auditory representations that indicate comments and edits using non-speech audio (e.g., earcons, tone overlay), multiple text-to-speech voices, and contextual presentation techniques. We then performed a systematic evaluation study with 48 screen reader users that indicated that non-speech audio, changing voices, and contextual presentation can potentially improve writers’ collaboration awareness. We discuss implications of these results for the design of accessible collaborative systems.

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A Theoretically Informed Approach to Collaborative Writing in EAP Contexts Using Web-Based Technologies

Applications of CALL Theory in ESL and EFL Environments - Advances in Educational Technologies and Instructional Design ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-2933-0.ch001 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 1-21 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Kris Pierre Johnston ◽

Geoff Lawrence

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

Learning Communities ◽

Collaborative Writing ◽

Future Research ◽

Web Based ◽

Online Collaborative Learning ◽

Writing Practices ◽

Curricular Design ◽

Technological Affordances ◽

Writing Tools

This chapter examines the need for a theoretically-informed approach to collaborative English for Academic Purpose (EAP) pedagogy and research. It discusses the relevance of online collaborative learning in EAP and the call for a theoretically-informed facilitative framework to guide the use of online collaborative writing tools to sustain learning communities and language learning. It establishes the importance of virtual learning communities as catalysts for online collaboration and discusses the need to examine technological affordances, adopting an ecological perspective to inform curricular design. The chapter examines the relevance of the Community of Inquiry model and its three presences: cognitive, social and teaching, as a theoretical basis to inform a facilitative framework to design online collaborative EAP writing tasks. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the interactions of these three presences, details on how they can inform online EAP collaborative writing practices and the need for future research in this area.

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Collaborative Writing Tools in the Virtual Workplace

E-Collaboration ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-652-5.ch102 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 1374-1388

Author(s):

Norman E. Youngblood ◽

Joel West

Keyword(s):

Collaborative Writing ◽

Effective Solution ◽

Virtual Workplace ◽

Industry Standards ◽

Writing Tools ◽

E Mail

Collaborative writing is an important element of the virtual workplace. While it is sometimes enough to e-mail a document back and forth between authors and editors, users frequently need a more effective solution. Users can choose from system-based or browser-based software and from synchronous and asynchronous editors. These products can vary from the simple to the sophisticated and from free to expensive. This chapter looks at research on the use of collaborative editors and tools currently on the market and provides guidance as how to evaluate the appropriateness of the tools, paying particular attention to collaborative features, industry standards, and security.

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