investigating the impacts of an online writing platform on efl students' writing and critical thinking skills; the case of medium app

This study set out to investigate the impacts of medium as an online social media writing platform on iranian efl students' writing skill; and to see whether the app is helpful for the development of critical thinking skill among the participating students. in doing so, having taken an open assessment pedagogy, a quasi-experimental design was used and a total of 62 iranian efl students were assigned into an experimental and a control group. the experimental group received their instruction through the app while the control group took part in face-to-face classroom instructions taking advantage of traditional language learning activities. paired and independent sample t-tests were used to analyze the collected data. the results revealed that the experimental group benefited more of the instruction than the control group. further analysis showed that the students' development of writing and critical thinking skills were more in line with using the app in the experimental group than those in the control group. more specifically, being informed by a learner contributed approach, the medium app enabled the students to post their writing assignments in the app and to actively participate in a cyclic processes of editing and reediting their assignments while having in mind their audience. this could, in turn, motivate them to have a critical perspective toward their own writing and to see how their thinking has changed. although there exist some potential challenges and pitfalls, suggestions regarding the effective deployment of the app are provided.