Abstract
The online writing tool HedgeDoc serves well in teaching and research in many ways. At #OER22 in London, I will present how it works and how I use it in teaching with a pre-produced video.
Collaborative content creation with HedgeDoc
Being able to collaborate is claimed to be a core skill, for students as well as for teachers. Besides the concrete how-to of using tools that enable collaboration, there is also a learning curve in how to work together collaboratively on the social level (e.g. Scager et al., 2016).
Good experience tackling these socio-technical challenges was gained with the free and open source tool HedgeDoc over the last three years (HedgeDoc, 2022). Compared to collaborative writing tools of big ICT players HedgeDoc is closer to a web page than to an office document and thus enables the (re)mixing of rich media sources of various kinds as well as easy publishing on the web.
Regarding three scenarios HedgeDoc was successfully used in, the hands-on part of this workshop gives participants the opportunity to try out the tool themselves and discuss its potentials for teaching and learning.
Experience 1: Developing learning material together
Good experience in learning to collaborate with HedgeDoc was also gained in developing online course material with a team of staff members at Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU). In a process of rapid prototyping the teaching idea with HedgeDoc, frequent discussions and with an open and agile mindset, colleagues supported each other, before the result was transferred to an LMS. On the way, a shared understanding of teaching and learning, values and ideas was developed among the group members.
Experience 2: Teaching scholarly writing
HedgeDoc also does a good job in the process of teaching students how to write scholarly term papers. With the beginning of a course each student starts with a HedgeDoc of her own, writing down a research question and first ideas and assumptions. Students share their HedgeDoc openly in the group to profit from comments of others and share references. Now and then selected documents are discussed in class, thus being object of peer review processes everybody can participate in.
Experience 3: Collecting information with learners
HedgeDoc was used in a learning circle on AI and robotics in April/May 2021 based on the eponymous concept of the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU, 2022). Participants discussed questions in video conferences which they brought up themselves, collected resources from the web and synchronously documented the discussion in a shared HedgeDoc online pad. Finally, participants agreed on a publication of the collaborative document as an open educational resource (Bauer et al, 2021).
Hands-on
Please get in touch for a meeting to try out HedgeDoc together.
Resources and References
- All links and references from the video: https://writemd.rz.tuhh.de/s/LBBhS_KPr
- Bauer, S., Dürkop, A., Fahrenkrog, G., Köhncke, M., Kranz, S. & Politt, S. (2021). Mitgedacht: Roboter in meinem Leben – und jetzt? : Documentation of a learning circle on robotics und AI. University library TU Hamburg. https://doi.org/10.15480/882.3643
- HedgeDoc. (2022). HedgeDoc. Software. https://github.com/hedgedoc/hedgedoc
- P2PU. (2022). About P2PU. https://www.p2pu.org/en/about/
- Scager, K., Boonstra, J., Peeters, T., Vulperhorst, J., & Wiegant, F. (2016). Collaborative Learning in Higher Education: Evoking Positive Interdependence. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(4), ar69. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-07-0219
