Fostering Critical Thinking Skills in the EFL College-Level Classroom Through Online Collaborative Document Tools

This paper explores the potential of applying online collaborative documents to foster critical thinking skills in EFL college-level classrooms.Considering the limitations of traditional teacher-centered approaches and the need for innovative methods,the study examines the integration of online collaborative tools,using Tencent Docs as an example.The discussion highlights the importance of critical thinking in the academic and professional spheres and introduces the concept of online collaborative documents for enhancing this cognitive skill.Through a detailed exploration,the paper presents a model of employing collaborative documents within a college English class,demonstrating how students collaboratively learning an article.Then,the paper discusses the pros and cons of employing this technology in classroom.The conclusion emphasizes the transformative potential of integrating technology into pedagogy and its role in creating a dynamic learning environment.The paper underscores the importance of striking a balance between technology and traditional methods,foreseeing avenues for further research and development.

Effects of Online English Movie Reviews on Improving Students' Writing

This study aims to study the effectiveness of online English movie reviews for improving university students’English writing in China.English movie reviews can be profitably undertaken to improve university students’writing ability by reading English movie reviews online,discussing topics related to English movie reviews and writing English movie reviews collaboratively.University students have easy access to English movie reviews massively available on the Internet,which renders it possible and feasible for English teachers to use them to improve students’English writing.Online English movie reviews provide students with enough input of model texts,hence they can acquire some appropriate expressions before writing within a short period of time.In addition,discussion on English movie reviews through Emails and QQ platform can activate students’critical thinking to stimulate their original ideas for English movie review writing.Writing English movie reviews collaboratively with the help of Internet can develop students’confidence in writing because of peer feedback and less pressure.

Recommendations for Using Wiki in Online Group Projects in Engineering Education

Although Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis have been used for supporting collaborative learning in higher education, there are not many reports about implementation of that resource on engineering in Brazil. In this way, the main purpose of this research is to use a wiki platform for online activities and evaluate how students collaborate with each other in online tasks. It was investigated how collaboration can be measured on wiki platform During four-week online activities, 40 students of Civil Engineering course were monitored on Wikispaces~ platform. All students＇ actions were analyzed and classified as low, medium, or high level of collaboration. The data were collected through the statistical reports of Wikispaces~ and Google Analytics platforms. It computed 336 students＇ actions： 16.67% as high level, 45.24% as medium, and 38.10% as low. During informal interview, most of students （70%） related that wiki was a nice tool for collaboration work. The results indicated that wiki platform is an important way to develop innovative activities and tasks for the purpose of improving engineers＇ abilities and skills such as： writing communication, organization, collaboration, and critical thinking development.

A multistage collaborative 3D GIS to support public participation

This paper presents a collaborative 3D GIS to support public participation.Realizing that public-involved decision-making is often a multistage process,the proposed system is designed to provide coherent support for collaborations in the different stages.We differentiate ubiquitous participation and intensive participation and identify their suitable application stages.The proposed system,then,supports both of the two types of participation by providing synchronous and asynchronous collabora-tion functionalities.Applying the concept of Digital Earth,the proposed system also features a virtual globe-based user interface.Such an interface integrates a variety of data,functions,and services into a unified virtual environment which is delivered to both experts and public participants through the Internet.The system has been designed as a general software framework and can be tailored for specific projects.In this study,we demonstrate it using a scene modeling case and provide a preliminary evaluation toward its usability.

An Investigation of the Use of Wikis in English Language Learning

This paper presents a study exploring the efficacy of Wikis in an online language exchange program involving a purposeful sample of university students from China and the UK. The article first provides a brief overview of the use of Web 2.0 applications in language education. It then specifically addresses the potential advantages of using Wikispaces in second language acquisition, particularly in tasks designed for the purpose of collaborative learning. Research methods employed in the study included questionnaire, interview and analysis of textual input on Wikis. Participants were students from two partner universities in China and the UK, who communicated with each other in English and Chinese to discuss curriculum-based topics posted to the China-UK Wikispaces. The results demonstrate that tasks designed for Wikis offer students constructive opportunities to communicate with each other and develop their language proficiencies. The findings also indicate that the informed involvement of language tutors in selecting topics and designing tasks is instrumental in effectively facilitating and further enhancing students＇ experiences of collaborative learning on Wikis.