Collaborative learning at low cost: CoWeb use in English composition

CoWeb is a collaborative learning environment used in many classes at Georgia Institute of Technology; it is an extremely simple domain-independent collaboration tool. Our aim is to show that such a simple system can sustain useful peer-to-peer and instructor-to-student interaction that fosters better performance and learning, without incurring a high cost. In this paper, we present evidence of the success of this tool in supporting learning at low cost in one environment—freshman-level English classes.