South Korea Summit 2016

This session may suit ideal educators in higher education settings, who require critical source-based essays as a form of assessment, and it may also be of interest to those who teach speakers of other languages in an English medium of instruction environment at both the highschool and university levels. Many such teachers will have noticed that international students tend to underperform compared to native students, that L2 academic writers tend to avoid ‘process writing’, make only ‘local’ changes after feedback, and tend to be resistant to deeply engaging in peer scaffolding activities, these are also common problems for native speakers and can be issues for EMI students in Korean or Asian university contexts, as well as for those in pre-tertiary contexts.

The presentation illustrates how Google Docs and Drive can be used to many common 'learner' problems, while enhancing learner engagement and improving peer scaffolding practices. Using evidence gathered from a Doctoral research project over a 13 week period at King’s College London in 2015. The evidence shows that principled use of Google Docs can have a strong positive effect on student perceptions of how effectively they are learning, motivation, criticality and autonomy by creating an ‘open feedback environment’ that provides a sense of audience and stimulates group learning processes.The session will both exemplify an effective approach when using Google Docs in 'writing' related classrooms, and explain the theoretical justification and evidence for its effectiveness. Attendees will thus gain a sense of both how it works and why it works, and how such methods can be extended to a variety of contexts. Attendees will also have a breif opportunity to discuss their own best practices with Docs and Drive and share with the group.