Collaboration

Using Ceilidh for collaboration on a project is amazingly simple and powerful. Students are able to communicate much like they would in a chat room, but with the added bonus of being able to exchange and work on a draft of a paper simultaneously. They are able to instantly post revisions of an assignment and continue discussion. In addition, instructors can easily see who was involved in the collaboration, who contributed to the process, and the extent to which each of the group members truly collaborated.

In a regular classroom, instructors can only hear the discussion between the members of one group at a time. Ceilidh allows instructors to view the discussion in each group. It easy to show students how the collaboration process developed and the differences between ineffective and effective groups. Instructors can use this information to grade accordingly. It can also be used to teach students strategies for working with other writers. This is done by showing students how other students used collaboration to effectively improve their work.