Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is an increasingly popular web service for paying people small rewards to do human computation tasks. Current uses of MTurk typically post independent parallel tasks. This research explores an alternative iterative paradigm, in which workers build on each other's work. We run a couple of experiments comparing the efficacy of this paradigm in two different problem domains...

This study investigates the benefits of e-collaborative and collaborative writing tasks on the perception of Iranian EFL learners in a process-oriented approach. The study involved 74 intermediate Iranian EFL students at Islamic Azad University, Isfahan Branch. They were divided into three groups by random assignment as two experimental groups and one control group. The experimental groups were...

The present study explores the effect of providing different types of written corrective feedback (WCF) on 79 Iranian EFL learners’ writings over time through a pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test. In this way, the study first aims to investigate the extent to which different types of WCF result in improved accuracy in writing over a period of two months, and then maintain...

These are two of the thoughts that ran through my mind when my graduate studies advisor suggested I try “writingto-learn” activities in my classes. Like many high school science teachers, I often thought that devoting class time to writing would take away from valuable time that could be spent doing “science learning” activities. I also felt that my training as a science teacher had not fully p...

Writing research has typically focussed on the text production elements of writing. Many everyday writing tasks, however, cannot be characterised simply in terms of text production since they often involve the use of source materials to support the composition process. As such, these tasks are better thought of as hybrid tasks. Such hybrid tasks have been given relatively little attention in th...