Cooperative or collaborative literacy practices: Mapping metadiscourse in a business students' wiki group project

Hesham Suleiman Alyousef
King Saud University
Michelle Yvette Picard
University of Adelaide

Although wikis have been used successfully in collaborative learning in higher education, there is a lack of research investigating wikis in business module assessment tasks. Little research to date has been conducted on how wikis formatively develop international English as a second language (ESL) in business students' academic discourse. In this case study, students' use of a wiki in an assessment task in the Intermediate Financial Reporting (IFR) module is examined. This study is framed by Hyland and Tse (2004) and Hyland's (2005, 2010) models for the analysis of metadiscourse markers in IFR discourse. The findings of the interviews showed that although students collaborated and cooperated together to do the task, they favoured cooperative over collaborative learning. The linguistic analysis findings showed that the use of interpersonal metadiscourse features varied in the wiki discussion pages versus the report, indicating the students' awareness of their audience and the different genres, although the textual features of the wiki discussion pages resembled those of the report. The study is significant as it is the first to explore wikis' epistemological effects on Master of Commerce students' learning and it could potentially assist in the enhancement of wikis as a learning tool in profession-related courses, particularly those with high numbers of international, ESL students.

Introduction

This paper focuses on the use of a wiki within the Blackboard learning management system in an assessment task in the Intermediate Financial Reporting (IFR) module. It aims to 1) study how students experience the use of this form of wiki in the IFR report writing assessment task; 2) analyse the textual and the interpersonal metadiscourse features in students' collaborative assignment writing, both in the wiki discussion pages and the report; 3) analyse the summative and the formative nature of the IFR assessment task, and compare the use of these features in wiki discussion pages and the report; and 4) analyse the collaborative nature of this assessment task.

Methodology

The corpus consists of four wiki discussion pages (3596 words) and a report (2268 words) with a total word count of 5864 words. The wiki examined in this study is integrated into the University's learning management system (LMS), Blackboard. The tutor set a closed wiki site for each group. For anonymity, the students were assigned the pseudonyms Abdulrahman, Sun, Jiang, Edward, Tracy, and Lydia. Two reliability procedures were conducted to achieve reliability in coding of metadiscourse markers: iteratively cross-checking the meaning of the codes and revising the annotations with a fellow linguist. The discourse analysis of students' use of metadiscourse features as employed by Hyland and Tse (2004) and Hyland (2010) was used, because it had the potential to reveal the ways participants project themselves (Hyland, 2005) into the two different texts, the wiki discussion pages and the report.

Metadiscourse analysis reveals the way students use 1) the interactive markers to make their texts more cohesive, and 2) the interactional markers to signal their attitude towards both the propositional content and the audience of the text. Therefore an analysis of the interactional markers provides insight into the dialogic nature of the collaborative wiki. A semi-structured interview (Appendix 1) was conducted with one student, Abdulrahman, to gain a richer understanding of his experiences in the group assignment task that was completed online on a wiki over five weeks (April-May 2010). In addition, an interview with the tutor that aimed to gain an understanding how the groups were assessed in this work was conducted. Although experiences of only two participants cannot be claimed to be a representative sample, their reflections give some insights into the experiences of students and tutors.

Metadiscourse

Interactive markers include transitions (to express semantic relations between clauses), frame markers (to refer to discourse acts, sequences, or text stages), endophoric markers (to refer to information in other parts of the text), evidential markers (to refer to the sourcing of information from other texts), and code glosses (for restatement of the ideational information). Interactional markers include hedges (to withhold writer's full commitment to proposition), boosters (to emphasise writer's certainty in proposition), attitude markers (to express writer's attitude to proposition), engagement markers (to explicitly refer to or build the relationship with reader), and self mentions (explicit reference to authors) (Table 1).

Following Hyland (1998), we have included parentheses and colons as instances of code glosses in the analysis, since much of the reformulation and exemplification is implemented through these visual markers. Hedges fall into two categories: low value subjective modalisation ("considering entities might be unable to cancel or transfer some liabilities") and low value modulated operators expressing choice ("might be not suitable"), possibility ("an entity could cancel or transfer an obligation", "the effect of possible new legislation is taken into consideration", and "possible obligation to be probable future outflows") and quality ("a change in legislation that would change or discharge the present obligation"). Engagement markers "explicitly address readers, either by selectively focusing their attention or by including them as participants in the text through second person pronouns, imperatives, question forms and asides" (Hyland, 2010, p. 129).

Category	Function	Examples
Interactive	Help to guide reader through text	Resources
Transitions	Express semantic relation between main clauses	In addition/ thus/ but/ and/ therefore/ however/ still
Frame markers	Refer to discourse acts, sequences, or text stages	First, second/ finally/ to conclude/ my purpose here is/ now, let's turn to
Endophoric markers	Refer to information in other parts of the text	Noted above/ see figure/ in section
Evidential markers	Refer to sources of information from other texts	According to X/(Y, 1990)/ Z states
Code glosses	Signal the restatement of ideational information	Namely/ e.g. / such as/ in other words/ that is
Interactional	Involve the reader in the argument	Resources
Hedges	Withhold writer's full commitment to present propositional information categorically	Might/ perhaps/ possible/ about/ may/ would/ could/ normally/ it appears that/ in many cases/ I think
Boosters	Emphasise force or writer's certainty in proposition	In fact/ definitely/ highly/ it is clear that/ of course/ obvious
Attitude markers	Express writer's affective attitude to propositions	Unfortunately/ hopefully/I agree/ surprisingly/ honestly/ appropriate/ remarkable/ to tell the truth
Engagement markers	Explicitly refer to or build relationship with reader (personal pronouns, questions and commands)	Consider/ note that/ you can see that
Self-mentions	Explicitly refer to authors	I/ me/ mine/ we/ our/ ours
Source: Hyland and Tse (2004) and Hyland (2010)

Results of the study

Aims of the task

• Skills of a higher order in interpersonal understanding, teamwork and communication;
• A commitment to the highest standards of professional endeavour and the ability to take a leadership role in the community.

• Gain knowledge and communication skills
• Demonstrate innovative thinking
• Look at issues from different angles
• Ability to collaborate and work in a team
• Be ethical
• Have leadership skills
• Demonstrate research ability

Nature of the task

• How is accounting policy made in Australia?
• What is the role of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Why are the International Accounting Standards important?
• What are International Accounting Standards Exposure Drafts (EDs)?
• What are the current EDs and why are the accountants concerned about them?

The tutor regulated and instructed students in this assignment task by commenting in the criteria for marking, not only on the content of the wiki pages, but also their research skills, communication skills, and innovativeness in using the wiki as a collaborative working tool. This is achieved through co-authoring, by making contributions and changes to each other's work on the report's wiki main page, before and after being engaged in discussions on additional wiki pages to share ideas, create, edit and discuss content. A collaborative written text consists of paragraph(s) that are convincing and coherent in terms of structure and content. Language choices are based on prior experience, social contexts, and references. Unlike traditional assignments, in this one the students are given complete freedom in regards to word limit, order of topics and format.

This freedom helps each group to build its own identity. The tutor states that students need to follow up quotations with explanations in their own words. They have to use the Harvard referencing system. The tutor asks students to complete an online form/survey posted before the assignment's due date, which aims to evaluate their team work experience and use of the wiki as a collaborative tool. This survey requires several short answers and it aims at meeting the learning needs of future students. Students unfamiliar with wikis can follow the link 'Wiki Testing Site' in the module's Blackboard site, which redirects them into a YouTube video. Rather than providing students with the traditional handouts, the tutor uses another form of Web 2.0 technology, an existing YouTube video clip to create a more visual learning experience.

The group's postings on the wiki

Four separate wiki pages were created for the topic-based discussions. While the task required the students to collaborate on the report writing process, in reality, they decided to designate 1-2 members for each wiki discussion page. They agreed, however, to allow contributions from other members if desired.

	Question	Web page number and title	Main contributors
Discussion pages	1. How accounting policy is made in Australia?	1. Why international standards are important and how accounting policy is made in Australia?	Abdulrahman and Jiang
	2. The role of the IASB: why the International Standards are important?	2. The relationship between IASB and AASB, and their roles	Tracy and Sun
	3. What EDs are and the part they play in standard settings?	3. Current Exposure Drafts (EDs)	Lydia and Edward
	4. What the current EDs are and what the accountants were concerned about?	4. Why are the accountants concerned about the exposure drafts?	Abdulrahman
The report	5. (not applicable)	5. Report to the Boss	All the six participants

This illustrates that, although collaborative tools are presumed to encourage collaborative behaviours, this is not necessarily the case as they also (or alternatively) support cooperative learning (Parker & Chao, 2007). Collaborative learning means that the tasks are done together whereas cooperative learning means that the tasks are divided between learners. Only Lydia seemed to have collaborated with the other group members as she combined her accounting standards summary with Edward's (Appendix 2, Wiki Discussion Page 3):

After reading Edward's post (thank for ur summary, its quite good :), i have combined her summary and my summary. Here it is:
1. IAS 19 Employee Benefits:
In summary, there are three main deficiencies in current IAS19:
1. Companies are not regulated under IAS19 to recognize their defined benefit plans in time. Such 'deferred recognition' makes the amount in financial statements misleading.
2. A united and standardized option for Companies to recognize gains and losses hasn't been set. This makes effects of defined benefit plans incomparable between companies.
3. Disclosures haven't put emphasis on the risks from defined benefit plans.

a fair and right analysis of the business performance and position, as well as allow comparison of businesses operating in different legal jurisdictions". All in all, International Accounting Standards ensure that businesses adopt similar rules/standards/policies in reporting the business activities, allowing analysis and comparison. (Appendix 2, Wiki Discussion Page 1)

Abdulrahman's use of the interactive learning environment to negotiate conceptual meaning with his fellow members contradicts the widely held view that some second language students' learning rests solely on the transmission of theoretical knowledge. Instead, as the Vygotskian social constructivist approach acknowledges, "learning develops in the dynamic of spoken interaction" (Wake, 2006, p.6). The students fully utilised all the features of the wiki genre and used it to construct both formal and informal discourse. Emoticons are available in the wiki tools. However, because the task required the students to use the wiki to write and refine academic content iteratively, only 3 out of the 6 students chose to use this feature at the end of their postings to express their feelings or emotions. For example, Sun decided to use the emoticon (smile with a wink) and Abdulrahman, Jiang and Lydia used the emoticon or its symbol :) (smile) to contextualise their discourse and create a sense of group interaction through humour. Luo (2009, p.39) suggested that some students use "Web 2.0 tools as social and entertainment "toys" and that this is reflected in the use of emoticons. However, in this study, students did not use emoticons as part of academic discourse, but rather preferred to use them to create close relationships with their group, which is appropriate to the discussion board genre.

Tutor's general and group feedback

Wheeler and Wheeler (2007, p.3) argue that some students will be reluctant to participate if they perceive "the strong probability that larger audiences exist beyond that of the conventional essay audience of 'one' and that they "need to adapt their writing styles, or open themselves up to scrutiny from a hidden audience". Twu (2009) suggests using strategies that promote harmony in social interaction by building a positive social learning environment. Twu also contends that instructors must convince their students that "editing" is not "correcting". It is the process through which ideas emerge and evolve clarification of meaning. Notari (2006:131) suggests developing a 'communication and comment culture' since "involving learners in making comments about the concepts of other learners helps construct personal knowledge and enhances meta-cognitive capacities". As the group members did not know each other beforehand, they need to find some way of establishing social ties. One way to break the ice could be to conduct a face to face meeting in week one. Tutors may also designate marks for those students who start early and engage in co-authoring.

The tutor comments on task achievement and specific strengths and weaknesses of the content. For example, she makes suggestions about content that should be added and asks the group to specify or clarify certain aspects. For example, the tutor commented on Abdulrahman's posting on Wiki Discussion Page 4:

include here who the AASB is other than it is a Government Agency. Who are the members? How many members?

On the "Why the accountants are concerned about the exposure drafts?" page Abdulrahman has given a very good interpretation in his own words of why we in Australia should be concerned about EDs. This should have been in the report and if you wrote the whole report in this way, i.e. answers to the questions in your words rather than disjointed bits and pieces that you have found on the Web, you would have gotten a much better mark.

Although the task sheet implies that students will be evaluated both on the process (the wiki discussion pages) and the product (the wiki report's page), a final summative assessment was conducted after submission of the assignment. Thus Abdulrahman's learning outcomes were affected by the lack of formative assessment that could have occurred during the process. The tutor (personal communication, 5 October 2010) argued that she used formative assessment with groups that started early in order to encourage them. However, with later-starting groups, as in this case, only summative assessment was used at the end. She added that it was the first time for her to use a wiki in assessment tasks and she has decided to provide future students with immediate formative feedback.

Results of the interviews

Abdulrahman states that his group members faced a number of obstacles when working on the wiki to do the assessment task. Abdulrahman (personal communication, 22 July 2010) states that in addition to the email, his group members held three face to face meetings during the six-week assignment period, in weeks 2, 4 and 6. First, students started working on the wiki before meeting face to face. Abdulrahman noted that he had taken the initiative on week 2 and created web pages 1 and 4 when none of the other students had participated. This was potentially problematic, as they had not developed guidelines for working and miscommunication could have occurred. However, no complications were reported as the group designated 1-2 members for each discussion page on its first face to face meeting. However, the lack of a meeting did appear to impact on students taking an initiative to start early. The second problem related to meetings was that the group had to postpone or reschedule two of their three meetings because one or more of the members could not attend due to classes. In the kickoff meeting they had agreed that each discussion page would be investigated cooperatively by 1-2 members, though each member would be free to contribute in the other pages. Thus prolonged face to face meetings was one of the main reasons for delayed contributions, although the tutor clearly stated in the task sheet that, similarly to workplace situations, "it does not matter if students do not know their team members". She commented in the interview that some members in other groups started introducing themselves in the Discussion page they created. In week six, the group members met face to face in order to finalise the report, by deciding which bits and pieces to use in the report.

As most of the group was reluctant to engage in co-authoring, Edward was encouraged to follow the same path. As he puts it on Wiki Discussion Page 3 (Appendix 2, lines 329-333):

Since there are a lot of contributions in this page, I find it hard to edit or delete any of your contributions, therefore I would like to add what I understood when I read Exposure Draft measurement of liabilities and Ed conceptual framework

The wiki format also has technical limitations which may affect the quality of the students' interactions. For example, since the wiki does not have a spell checker, either spontaneity may be affected when students stop and spell check or grammar check using a word processing program, or errors of expression may occur if they write directly on the wiki. Abdulrahman, however, argued that spontaneity was not affected at all when switching between the word processor and wiki pages.

Another more serious issue highlighted by Abdulrahman is equality of participation. Although, as noted above, the tasks were divided up at the first meeting, two of the students contributed for the first time only a few days before the assignment's deadline when realising that they would be assessed on their wiki contributions, as well as on the final hard copy of the report. He argues that may be they did not take this task seriously. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Web 2.0 tools are more often used as recreational "toys" than for academic purposes (Luo, 2009). Although the literature values the collaborative nature of wikis as educational tools (Bruns & Humphreys, 2005; De Pedro et al., 2006; Pusey and Meiselwitz, 2009; Luo, 2009), they are not necessarily valued by all student participants. Abdulrahman felt that he would have spent less time doing the task by himself since he does not "have to wait for the students' feedback" (personal communication, 22 July 2010). Elgort, Smith and Toland (2008) argue that this problem could be encountered by preparing students for group assessment through the introduction of 'mini wiki-tasks'. Despite the issue of time, however, Abdulrahman was aware that the quality of the text was enhanced by the group collaborative work. He suggested, however, that each student should complete the whole task independently and then the group should meet and choose the best contributions. This indicates that although face to face interaction and collaboration are valued by this group, 5 out of the 6 participants resisted online collaboration by engaging in online discussions rather than co-authoring their colleagues' posts.

Metadiscourse analysis

The frequency of the interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers in the wiki discussion pages (the process) and the report's page (the product) (Appendix 2) are listed below.

Categories		Discussion pages		The report
		Frequency	Percentage	Frequency	Percentage
Interactive	Transitions	76	42.5	49	41.9
	Evidential markers	64	35.8	37	31.6
	Code glosses	24	13.4	14	12.0
	Frame markers	4	2.2	14	12.0
	Endophoric markers	11	6.1	3	2.5
	Total interactive	179	100	117	100
Interactional	Engagement markers	49	27.5	6	8.3
	Self-mentions	46	25.8	1	1.4
	Hedges	52	29.2	37	51.4
	Attitude markers	30	16.9	28	38.9
	Boosters	1	0.6	0	0.0
	Total interactional	178	100	72	100

The metadiscourse analysis of the interactive markers revealed that transitions, evidential markers, code glosses, and endophoric markers ranked higher in the wiki discussion pages compared with the final report. Notably, the use of frame markers was about five times higher in the report than in the discussion pages.

The analysis of interactional metadiscourse markers revealed that engagement markers and self-mentions ranked higher in wiki discussion pages (27.5% and 25.8% respectively) than in the final report (8.3% and 1.4% respectively), while hedges and attitude markers ranked higher in the report, 51.4% and 38.9% respectively. Hedges were the most frequently used interactional markers in the report (51.4%) and in the wiki discussion pages (29.2%).

The use of engagement markers in the wiki discussion pages was three times higher than in the report. While over 34% of the interactional devices in the wiki discussion pages were self-mentions (I/my/we/our) and 'reader pronouns (you/your), the report almost lacked these resources, reflecting the typical formal academic discourse valued by most tutors. Students use 'must', 'should' and 'will' to strongly emphasise their point of view. They also use 'may', 'could, 'would' and 'possible' to explicitly express their arguments to the readers/tutor with due caution. Self-mentions include verbs expressing mental processes (think, see, focus, suggest), relational processes (have, be), behavioural processes (suggest, found) and material processes (post, summarise, read) as in the following examples (Appendix 2):

138	This is my summary.
190-192	I think it might be easier for you to see what I posted.
195-196	I haven't found the exact instruction in assignment.
204-206	In my opinion, once the EDs published by the IASB are commented and modified, they will become the final form.
312-314	To make our job easy and clear, I suggest we focu [sic] on 4 first.
391-393	I did not find a certain answer for this issue. However, according to my understanding, I come up with the following Justification.

The wiki discussion pages combine features appropriate to an expository essay with those usual for email discussion. The hybrid genre students produce is appropriate for this occasion. The writers establish rapport with the readers and show consideration for their fellow members through the use of the first person plural pronouns we, our, and us, as in the following (Appendix 2):

194-195	I am not quite sure that is it a must for us to list out the differences bewteen [sic] AASBs and IASs
196-197	Let us find this differences
198-200	This question raised in the instruction that we haven't even talked about yet...
208-210	So all our work, like finding out these differences, is to forecast in what way the current EDs will affect AASB

There are 15 instances where writers use the second person 'you' and 'your' to seek members' confirmation of a viewpoint, as in "You are right. It is worthy [sic] paying attention to that point", or to ask a member for his/her opinion as in "What do you think?" Students use commands and questions to argue or present propositional content related to accounting standards, such as in "why international accounting standards are important" and "identify technical issues". Finally, the report lacks instances of boosters, while they occur only once in the wiki discussion pages ("Hence, it will centainly [sic] have great impacts on the AASB").

Discussion of the findings

The students' way of working was perhaps due to the nature of the task. Since the students were rewarded on the number and quality of posts in the wiki, not how well they collaborated or worked together, the task itself seems to be cooperative rather than collaborative. De Pedro et al (2006) argue that the asynchronous nature of such collaboration has been viewed as promoting cooperation rather than competition amongst students. Each student in this study negotiated the content and structure of the wiki with his/her peers. The use of a wiki thus contributed to the group members' communication and knowledge sharing, thereby helping to improve the quality of their writing, as Abdulrahman stated. Most of the aims of the task seem to have been fulfilled, such as working in a team, gaining knowledge and communication skills, collaborating (as seen by Lydia's collaboration), demonstrating research abilities, demonstrating innovative thinking, and examining issues from different angles (when the group members negotiated with their peers).

The finding that the use of a wiki did not enable collaboration between most of the group members cannot be generalisable, as the tutor argues that few groups engaged online in co-authoring. In addition this group's collaboration during the face to face meeting when they decided which bits and pieces to take was based on the contributions and the peer feedback posted on the wiki Discussion pages. Abdulrahman's worries about the equality of participation can be tackled through the tutor's development of early intervention strategies to encourage the engagement of reluctant students (Weaver et al, 2010).

Though feedback helps students in knowing their points of strengths and their weaknesses, the summative feedback students received is likely to be of limited benefit as their contributions were evaluated at the end of the semester. While students in this study were informed that their assessment would depend not only on the product (the report), but also the collaborative process represented by their contribution, most students in the case study were reluctant to engage in altruistic acts by editing each other's pages, because they were probably concerned that such acts would either be not rewarded or their contribution would not be better than the deleted one.

Online synchronous meetings were not conducted in this study, perhaps because the students had three face to face meetings, or because the learning management system (LMS) used in this study did not have a "Chat" service. Prolonged contributions which were mainly caused by the delaying of the face to face meeting between the group members could be tackled by creating a separate wiki page for asynchronous discussions. Postponed meetings were amongst the difficulties found in a study by de Pedro et al (2006), which also included the tutor's motivation and previous training. Although the wiki used in this study had no spell checker, Generation Y learners are used to switching between different software, i.e. the word processor and the wiki.

Finally, the linguistic metadiscourse analysis showed that the wiki discussion pages contained spoken-like interactional metadiscourse markers (e.g. self mentions, reader pronouns and interjections) and also combined features of written language. The use of interactive markers was almost equal in both the discussion pages and the report. On the other hand, the use of frame markers in the report was about five times higher than in the discussion pages, reflecting students' awareness of the academic nature of reports and the differences between genres. However, most of the evidential markers used in the wiki discussion pages were hyperlinks, one of the features of Web 2.0 technologies. This feature is becoming widely used in reports. In contrast, the use of endophoric markers in the wiki discussion pages was higher than in the report. The findings for interactional metadiscourse markers revealed that wiki discussion pages contained almost double the amount of these resources than the report, indicating the semi-dialogic nature of the collaborative wiki. Since students used the wiki discussion pages as a Discussion Board, self-mentions were very high (25.8%), compared to 1.4% in the report (Table 3). This explains why the discourse in some parts of these pages is informal, personal, and emotive. In contrast, hedges were higher in the report (51.4%) than in the wiki discussion pages (29.2%) (Table 3). This supports Hyland and Tse's (2004) finding that hedges constituted the highest frequency of occurrence amongst other interactional markers in academic writing.

Only the wiki discussion pages contained personal pronouns that engaged the readers and, thereby, made the text more personal, interesting, and easy to follow. The discourse analysis showed that students used formal academic language in their report. However, in the discussion pages, formal-like academic language paralleled the spoken-like features.

The pedagogical implications for the use of the wiki based learning in a tertiary education environment are drawn from the findings and the literature. Therefore the following is necessary:

• Designating marks for those students who start early and engage in editing the implausible comments;
• Introducing 'mini wiki-tasks' (Elgort, Smith & Toland, 2008) that prepare students for group assessment;
• Encouraging students to create a separate wiki page for asynchronous Discussions in order to tackle delayed face to face meetings between the group members;
• Giving formative assessment equal weight with summative assessment;
• Encouraging late starters to participate in or initiate wiki activities;
• Assisting ESL students in using Microsoft Word spell and grammar checkers; and
• Giving students immediate feedback.

Conclusion

The analysis of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers revealed, respectively, the way students anticipate readers' need to follow an argument, and to participate in a dialogue. The discourse analysis showed that students used formal academic language in their report. However, in the discussion pages formal-like academic language paralleled the spoken-like features. The use of interactive metadiscourse markers was almost equal in both the discussion pages and the report. It is clear from students' use of the various metadiscourse markers that they have a good grasp of the various features of different genres. This indicates that the wiki task facilitated ESL business students' awareness of their audience in each genre type.

The results of the interviews illustrate the importance of studying the effect of the lack of a spell checker in wikis on ESL/EFL students' spontaneity. Further research comparing the use of wikis by ESL learners with local native speakers would be useful to ascertain whether this form of communication and co-authoring has similar effects on these different cohorts. Further research is also needed to investigate the causes of and remedies for low levels of collaboration amongst students.

Acknowledgments

Appendix

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Authors: Hesham Suleiman Alyousef is a lecturer in the Department of English and Literature at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He is completing his PhD dissertation on the literacy and numeracy practices of Master of Commerce students from the perspectives of systemic functional linguistics and academic literacies. He completed his MA in Applied Linguistics in 2007 at King Saud University. His research interests include systemic functional linguistics, academic literacies, metadiscourse, multimodal discourse analysis and the use of Web 2.0 technology in higher education. Email: hesham@ksu.edu.sa Dr Michelle Yvette Picard is a senior lecturer and Director of Researcher Education and Development at Adelaide Graduate Centre, the University of Adelaide. Her research interests include academic language and learning, language and culture, postgraduate supervision, issues in higher education, academic literacies and e-learning. Email: michelle.picard@adelaide.edu.au Please cite as: Alyousef, H. S. & Picard, M. Y. (2011). Cooperative or collaborative literacy practices: Mapping metadiscourse in a business students' wiki group project. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 27(3), 463-480. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet27/alyousef.html