A DISCUSSION BASED ON THE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE EDITING OF ACADEMIC TEXTS

In higher education processing academic literature can be seen as a central but often quite challenging task, especially for undergraduate students. Assuming that deep processing of the subject matter requires an active construction of knowledge by the learner for which social interaction may be helpful; this study concerns the facilitation of collaborative literature processing. Combining the advantages of social interaction, such as increased “ownership” of ideas and the opportunity to connect to ehisting knowledge with the possibilities of delayed communication for (re)reading, (re)writing, and reflection, anchored discussion should provide room for a thorough processing of students’ course materials. The apparent preference of students for sharing opinions and experiences instead of building new understanding of the subject matter can be understood in the following way. The mediated nature of abstract knowledge can cause learning in a university setting to differ from more direct learning as it might take place in other “real” settings. Since the somewhat “unnatural” task of processing academic learning materials might not lie very close to the personal perspectives of the participating students, a link might need to be negotiated between students’ personal and more academic perspectives. Furthermore, constructing new knowledge is a difficult process, as students need to “discover” a new understanding of the subject matter that no one yet