Improving graduate students’ reading comprehension and summary writing in CSCL

Abstract

Since the process of summary writing is internal and unobservable in onsite instruction, graduate students have few opportunities to provide their peers with feedback for improving summaries. This study reports on the design of a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) system to investigate the effects of online peer collaboration and feedback on graduate students’ summary writings while reading academic texts. The results of this study reveal that the graduate students made more significant progress through using CSCL rather than through onsite instruction alone. The regression analysis and the open-ended questionnaire also show that the graduate students who actively engaged in peer collaboration and feedback made more revisions and progress in their academic reading and summary writings than those of students who passively participated.