Online Small Groups Talk in English Collaborative Prewriting Phase Viewed from Social Presence Frame

Abstract

During the COVID-19, the students of Indonesian tertiary conducted teaching and learning activities with distance learning or distance learning in the English academic writing course. The novelty of the current study is that small groups talk in the collaborative prewriting phase via WhatsApp using social presence framework. This study investigated what students talked about while doing academic writing tasks at a private university in Indonesia. The methodology applied a descriptive quantitative. The instruments used were observation and questionnaires. We conducted observation in chatrooms. The questionnaire was distributed to find out the students’ responses to the prewriting process from the fifteen participants. For the observation data, we used the content analysis technique, textual data were coded into social presence indicators using Nvivo12 software. The questionnaire was validated by employing content and construct validity with two expert judgments. The findings showed that four groups constructed collaborative floors, positive responses, organization, language, content, task negotiation, and shared resources with different contributions. In performing identity online, eight dominant students in each group took more roles than others. The result of students’ responses was that they perceived discussion online in the collaborative prewriting phase. The study recommends that small online groups talk in the synchronous joint prewriting phase promotes social presence and assist the students in enhancing critical thinking skill and academic writing.