The effect of ComputerMediated Collaborative Learning on Iranian Advanced Female EFL Learners’ Critical Thinking and Writing Performance

In this study, the researcher attempted to investigate the effect of computermediated collaborative learning on Iranian advanced female English Learners’ critical thinking and writing performance. In order to do this, initially 90 participants were chosen. To assure the homogeneity regarding language proficiency, they participated in a TOEFL exam which was used to select 60 out of 90 students whose scores fell between +1 and 1 SD for this study. Participants were then randomly assigned to two 30member control and experimental groups. In this study, Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking AppraisalForm A (Watson Glaser, 1980) was used as a pretest to see to what extent the participants think critically. A writing test was also administered to assess the writing performance of the learners as writing pretest. This writing was adapted from TOEFL Writing section and the results were scored by 3 raters. Then, two groups participated in ten sessions. The experimental group was provided with 15 laptops as well as with internet access so as to be able to extract the necessary information for completing their writing. Finally, the critical thinking questionnaire was administered again. Also, a posttest writing was administered to investigate the effect of treatment on the writing performance. The results of data analysis indicated that computermediated collaboration led to better writing performance of the learners. Computermediated collaboration also proved to have a statistically significant effect on critical thinking level of the participants.