Innovation in Language Learning

Over the last decades, the presence of information and communication technology (ICT) became evident in practically every aspect of our lives. Such vast spread of ICT makes language educators reconsider traditional approaches to language teaching and learning and encourages them to incorporate ICT tools to better meet the educational needs of university students, improve the learning outcomes, and overall boost learners’ motivation. This paper presents a case study of a technology enhanced collaborative writing project within the setting of an advanced course in Legal English at the Faculty of Law of the University of Turku. First, it briefly describes the classroom-based project, which centers around a problem-solving task on legal correspondence, and then examines the use and potential of Google Docs as an effective interactive tool for on-line collaborative writing (both synchronous and asynchronous) in the context of this project. A brief questionnaire survey, conducted upon completion of the abovementioned task in order to elicit the participants’ reflections on their learning experience, enabled the author to investigate the advantages and drawbacks of Google Docs as a valuable resource for collaborative writing in a foreign language learning classroom not only from the instructor’s but also from the students’ perspective. The majority of the students, along with the course instructor, were very positive about the experience highlighting the user-friendly format of Google Docs and the fact that the software allowed effective simultaneous collaborative knowledge construction, with only a few expressing some reservations regarding technical problems with the software.