The Online Writing Collaboration Project for EFL Learners and Instructors
Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf
The Online Writing Collaboration Project (OWCP) is a pioneer online learning management system in Saudi Arabia and Arab countries, developed, designed, updated, and managed by a Saudi graduate student at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. It aims at helping EFL/ESL students of different proficiency levels, with different cultural backgrounds and educational settings, in different parts of the world develop their writing skills and share knowledge and experiences though several writing tools readily available for them. It is free of charge. Students participate voluntarily. Participating students, instructors, leaders, moderators and tutors come from different countries and are native and non-native speakers. Attendees will gain knowledge about OWCP components, writing tools and resources, discussion forums, know the difference between OWCP and Blackboard. They will learn how to join OWCP, advantages of OWCP to EFL students and instructors, how it can be used to develop students’ writing skills, and students’ views. OWCP consists of Moodle-type e-courses, in addition to threaded discussion forums, an Advanced Educational Center, an Interactive Learning Center, Live chat, Live Tutoring, a writing tutorial that offers basic writing lessons, peer review help, online writing assistant and others. OWCP has 97 writing tutors who provide on-to-one tutoring. Students and instructors are free to post a thread about anything of interest, respond and interact at their own convenience. They can post queries and receive answers. They can use a nickname. It can be used for credit and non-credit. I will introduce OWCP, compare OWCP with Blackboard, and report participants’ opinions. We will explore the writing tools, give a detailed comparison with Blackboard, view examples of participants’ posts and instructional content