INTRODUCTION

Educational institutions and individual educators are adopting social software tools (often called Web 2.0 tools) such as wikis and blogs to support learning and teaching (Alexander, 2006; Downes, 2005; Franklin & van Harmelen, 2007). Although there are several examples of the effective use of social software tools (e.g., Minocha, 2009), there is currently little (formal) guidance for educators to assist them vis-à-vis the design and assessment of learning activities. Furthermore, designing assessment can be extremely challenging (see Cubric, 2007; MacDonald, 2005). On the one hand, counting the number of students’ contributions may not be an effective indicator of their students’ work if the contributions are not insightful enough. On the other hand, ignoring the interaction and collaboration within the group as indicators for assessment coul....