Emerging Roles in Scripted Online Collaborative Writing in Higher Education Context

Roles-based script is one form of scaffolds commonly used to overcome the difficulties in collaborative writing. However roles that emerge during collaboration often different from the roles specified in the script given. This study examines how the roles emerge in online collaborative writing, and how it impacts the group's collaboration. This study used a multiple case studies design. Three groups were observed. Each group was analyzed separately and interpretations done on a case-by-case basis. Following this, general results were compared across the cases. The result shows that each group developed unique emerging roles. Although the script enhance group collaboration and ensure that the task given was completed within the framework given; there were two problems observed; first, unequal participation and secondly, quality of group collaboration. Therefore, it is important for the teacher(s) to decide how to support the transition from other- to self-regulation and successively to fade out script given. The teacher(s) might want to motivate students to continue the scripted activities by having the learners mutually control the continued engagement in the specified activities and possibly by rewarding engagement in these activities.