Effectiveness of Using Collaborative Virtual Writing Platforms to Enhance EFL Pre-Service Teachers’ Reflective Writing and Content Curation Skills

Abstract

Abstract T he current study aimed at investigating pre-service EFL teachers’ reflections on their writing, and examining the development of reflective writing via using collaborative virtual writing platforms. The study participants were 30 pre-service teachers forming two groups (Control = 15, Experimental = 15) – enrolled in a semester of Practical Training Period – at Princess Nora Bint AbdulRahman University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the 2016/2017 academic year. A survey ( one-on-one interview) and an in-depth document analysis constituted the tools of the study. Having developed and validated those tools, they were administered pre and post using collaborative reflections in PENFLIP platform to the experimental group, whereas the control group wrote their reflections in a routine individual way. Frequent instructor feedbacks were introduced to help the experimental group evaluate their reflections. One of the main study results revealed that 40% of the student teachers were non-reflective due to their inexperience of reflective thinking  reflecton on wrting, and their lack of theoretical knowledge and course content.