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Design and evaluation of a collaborative learning environment
Computers & Education 53 (2009) 1138–1146
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Computers & Education journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu
Design and evaluation of a collaborative learning environment Qiyun Wang Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 26 August 2008 Received in revised form 22 May 2009 Accepted 22 May 2009
Keywords: Cooperative/collaborative learning Interactive learning environments Learning communities Lifelong learning
a b s t r a c t Collaboration becomes an essential competency in the current knowledge society. In this study, a collaborative learning environment was designed to facilitate students in group collaboration. Instructional support strategies of friendship and meaningful learning tasks were applied to promote collaboration. Scaffolding strategies such as writing progress reports and developing product versions were used to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning environment. In addition, the online file sharing tool DriveHQ was used to facilitate collaboration. Four classes of students used the learning environment to complete their final project in pairs. Results showed friendship and meaningful learning tasks helped to promote individual accountability and positive interdependence, and the use of progress reports and product versions was useful for coordinating and monitoring the learning process. However, additional strategies might be needed for more effective collaboration to take place. Issues involved in this study are discussed. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction In the new information age, work becomes more knowledge-based, interdisciplinary and complicated. It is hardly possible for an individual to complete a sophisticated task without the help of others. The ability to work collaboratively hence becomes highly valued in the present workplace (Barron, 2000). Students ought to learn how to work collectively when they are in schools so that the transition from the school to the workplace is less daunting (Chai & Tan, 2009). Coordinating group members’ collaboration in the learning process is crucial for computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Placing students in groups and telling them to work together does not mean collaboration will naturally happen (Johnson & Johnson, 1994). It is critical that the group work is sufficiently coordinated among group members so that each one makes an equal contribution to the success of the whole work. Or, they may work on different versions, which are hard to synchronize later. Even worse, they may work towards different directions. A collaborative learning environment should support group members’ coordination so that they complete the task more efficiently. Students are often individually assessed when they participate in collaborative work in schools. Little attention has been given to examining how collective learning can be effectively assessed in a CSCL setting (van Aalst & Chan, 2007). Teachers often assume that group members have made equal contributions to the task completion and give the same grade to each member, which is unfair as it may make better students feel resentful and send wrong messages to slackers (Paswan & Gollakota, 2004). Monitoring closely the learning process so that a fair assessment can be administered becomes essential. In addition, monitoring the learning process enables teachers to adjust learning activities promptly and provide appropriate support when needed (Pozzi, Manca, Persico, & Sarti, 2007). In this study, four classes of students participated in a project in pairs. A collaborative learning environment was designed to facilitate them in group collaboration. A set of instructional support strategies such as friendship and meaningful learning tasks was applied to promote collaboration. In addition, some scaffolding strategies were used to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning process. A progress report was used to coordinate group members’ collaboration. Also, each group was encouraged to create various folders to save their product versions. The aim of this study was to investigate whether these strategies helped to promote collaboration, and to coordinate and monitor students’ learning effectively. 2. Conceptual framework: computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) CSCL is an emerging research field that focuses on how collaborative learning, supported by technology, can enhance peer interaction and work in groups, and how collaboration and technology facilitate sharing and distributing knowledge and expertise among community
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members (Lipponen, Hakkarainen, & Paavola, 2004). Although much research literature in CSCL reports mixed or negative findings (cf. Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004), numerous research studies have demonstrated that group work generally leads to better learning outcomes than individual work (Barron, 2000; Lipponen et al., 2004; Neo, 2003). This section elaborates on two important features of CSCL, which are individual accountability and positive interdependence, and the importance of coordinating and monitoring the collaborative learning process. 2.1. Individual accountability A group is a combination of individuals who usually possesses different knowledge and skills. Because of the existence of cognitive diversity, group members have the possibility to share expertise from different perspectives, supplement one another, and make reciprocal contributions to the task completion (Brown & Campione, 1994; Järvelä, Häkkinen, Arvaja, & Leinonen, 2004). On the other hand, completing a complicated group work heavily depends on the individual contributions of its members, and each member is accountable for his or her share of the work. In an ideally collaborative situation, each individual plays a critical role and makes an equal contribution to the group work rather than one works for all. Individual accountability is the measurement of whether the contribution of a group member has helped to achieve the group’s overall goals (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1998). With the presence of individual accountability, students often take ownership for the learning task and for learning (Kirschner, Strijbos, Kreijns, & Beers, 2004; Moallem, 2003; Neo, 2003). As a result, they take more responsibilities, find more personal values, and are more likely to become agents in their own learning (Milner-Bolotin, 2001). However, Rainer and Matthews (2002) remind that ownership cannot be given. It should be promoted by providing conditions or strategies to encourage them to own learning. Making the learning task meaningful is a useful strategy to promote individual accountability, as it enables group members to see the value of the learning task and its relevance to their needs (Arvaja, Häkkinen, Eteläpelto, & Rasku-Puttonen, 2000). This will result in students who take more ownership for the learning task and make more contributions to the task completion. Equality is another useful strategy for establishing individual accountability among group members. Research shows when team members perceive that the others in the group have equal status in terms of abilities and resources, they tend to make more equal contributions, become more willing to interact with peers, and the atmosphere becomes more open (Damon & Phelps, 1989). However, equality can sometimes result in conflict, as they have equal rights and may not be able to reach consensus within a short time period (Strom & Strom, 2002). In this case, friendship may help to avoid conflicts to happen. Additional instructional strategies can be applied to foster individual accountability as well. For instance, clearly specifying the individual roles or responsibilities of group members by using jigsaw or Student Team Achievement Division may help to increase individual accountability (Slavin, 1990). Also, assessments focusing more on the learning process can stimulate students to put more effort into the learning task and make more individual contributions (Graham & Misanchuk, 2004). Furthermore, research suggests that individual accountability increases when the performance of individual students is assessed, and the results are given back to the group (Vuorinen, Tarkka, & Meretoja, 2000). Other mechanisms such as random checking, or individual skill demonstration also help to foster individual accountability. 2.2. Positive interdependence Only when a rain drop falls into the ocean will it never go dry. Similarly, in the information society, no one knows it all. People are critically dependent on each other to get job done (Lipponen, 2002). To a certain extent, ‘collaborative learning is not just nice, it is necessary for survival’ (Brown, 1994, p.10). Positive interdependence links group members together. The contribution of each individual is counted for the success of the team work. One cannot succeed unless all members succeed; they either sink or swim together (Johnson et al., 1998). Mutuality is often demonstrated in a positively interdependent learning environment. Mutuality refers to the extent to which there is reciprocity and balance in interaction so that all members can contribute and be heard (Barron, 2000). A strong feeling of a sense of community helps to establish and increase positive interdependence among group members (Kirschner, 2002). Research shows that good working relationship helps to maintain a community, and good relationship is often built not on-task but rather off-task (Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004; Rovai, 2001). A close social affinity such as friendship among group members can support the establishment of good working relationship, as they do not need to negotiate the rules of collaboration and they have built ways of working which are implicitly understood rather than explicitly discussed (Vass, 2002). Therefore, keeping a close friendship among group members is crucial for the establishment of positive interdependence. Positive interdependence can also be stimulated through other instructional support on resources, rewards, roles, or the environment (Brush, 1998). For instance, teachers may give specific resources to different individuals in the group to promote resource interdependence; besides individual scores on an exam, individual students can be given a certain number of points if all group members score at or above a certain grade to raise reward interdependence. In conclusion, individual accountability and positive interdependence are two salient features of collaborative learning. They are interrelated to each other. For effective collaborative learning to take place, every member should play an active role in the learning process and contributes his/her share to the group work. Also, their contributions are essential to the success of their individuals and of the group as a whole. They are equally important in the learning process and over emphasizing one has the danger of undermining the cohesiveness of the group or subjective initiatives (Graham & Misanchuk, 2004). A number of strategies can be applied to promote individual accountability and positive interdependence, such as making the learning task more meaningful, or building equality and friendship among group members. 2.3. Coordination Individual accountability and positive interdependence call for coordination. In a collaborative learning environment, group members identify and build on their individual strengths so that everyone makes a great contribution to the learning task. Furthermore, their individual effort must be synchronized to ensure that they all work towards the same direction and make coherent contributions.
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External support is needed for effective coordination to take place. The complexity of authentic problems involved in a collaborative learning task poses difficulties to the students, who must continuously negotiate plans and share understanding. They often struggle with organizing evidence and interpreting results, and get lost or overwhelmed by the large amount of data or information. They need external scaffolding strategies to organize, coordinate, and reflect upon on-going ideas through the long-term investigation process (Land & ZembalSaul, 2003). A number of supporting strategies or tools for coordination and collaboration have been reported in literature. For instance, Lin, Hmelo, Kinzer, and Secules (1999) used the social discourse (dialogue with peers and instructors), process prompts (questions to help students organize and externalize their thinking), and process displays (intermediate processes they have engaged in) to support reflection and coordination. Barron (2000) employed workbooks to structure students’ collaboration through the problem. In addition, students may use phones, emails, or short messages to communicate and coordinate with one another. They may also use web-based supporting tools, such as bulletin boards or shared workspaces to share resources, negotiate meanings and coordinate with others. Collaboration scripts have been commonly used to structure and coordinate collaborative processes (Dillenbourg, 2002; Hämäläinen, 2008; O’Donnell, Dansereau, Hall, & Rocklin, 1987). A collaboration script is a set of instructions prescribing how students should interact and collaborate and how they should solve the problem (Dillenbourg, 2002). The use of a collaboration script helps students to reduce the uncertainty about coordination efforts (Mäkitalo, Weinberger, Häkkinen, Järvelä, & Fischer, 2004), because from which they know how to behave and what to expect in particular situations. Additionally, a script supports students’ development of meta-cognitive, motivational, or emotional competencies (Kollar, Fischer, & Hesse, 2003). Epistemic scripts and social scripts are often used to facilitate collaboration (Hämäläinen, 2008). The epistemic script specifies and sequences knowledge construction activities and aims to facilitate expertlike problem solving behavior by engaging learners in epistemic activities (Dufresne, Gerace, Hardiman, & Mestre, 1992). It instructs students in how to deal with tasks. It helps group members know what information they should be looking for and how they can use the information to solve the problem. A social script specifies the ways they interact with other group members by assigning clear roles and responsibilities. Effective use of epistemic scripts and social scripts helps to structure and enhance collaborative processes (Weinberger, Ertl, Fischer, & Mandl, 2005). 2.4. Monitoring learning processes Learning is a highly interactive and dynamic process. For effective learning to take place in a CSCL learning environment, monitoring closely how students collaborate in the process is crucial. To students, keeping track of what has been established and what needs to be further revised makes the learning process be carried out in a more organized and efficient way. To teachers, monitoring the learning process allows them to identify strengths and weaknesses of the instructional design or the learning environment so that they can adjust the learning process promptly for unexpected needs or improve the curriculum further in the future (Pozzi et al., 2007). Monitoring the collaborative learning process can also help teachers to keep track on students’ on-going performance so that any pitfall leading to potential failures can be immediately diagnosed and appropriate support can be provided. Teachers need to collect and analyze data constantly to keep the learning process under control. They must ensure the learning process is going on smoothly and proper decisions are made when needed (Chai & Tan, 2009). Additionally, monitoring the learning process enables the teacher to assess students’ individual and group learning more accurately. The prevailing views of learning that emphasize on the social, distributed, and collective nature of learning result in a need to capture, assess and characterize both individual and collaborative aspects of knowledge construction in CSCL (Chan & Van Aalst, 2004). Keeping track on the collaborative learning process allows the teacher to discern students’ individual contributions and to assess them fairly. However, monitoring the learning process is not a simple activity. It often requires external support to keep track on what has happened and what is going on in the learning process (Land & Zembal-Saul, 2003). Research reveals that many ICT tools can be used to monitor the learning process. For instance, the use of weblogs enables students to externalize their thoughts in an on-going manner. Posts in a weblog are organized in a reverse chronological order, with the most recent post on the top and the oldest post at the bottom. Tracking the weblog postings helps to facilitate the awareness of how one constructs meanings over time (Fiedler, 2003; Wang & Woo, 2008). E-portfolio is also a useful tool for tracking and assessing learning processes. Van Aalst and Chan (2007) used e-portfolios to assess and identify individual and collective aspects of knowledge building, and the results showed that portfolios reflected distributed cognition and demonstrated how students made progress and advanced their community knowledge collectively. Land and Zembal-Saul (2003) used the Progress Portfolio software to capture students’ on-going investigation. Their findings confirmed the importance of monitoring the learning process. In conclusion, coordinating and monitoring learning processes is crucial for individual accountability and positive interdependence to take place in a collaborative learning process. However, coordination and monitoring the learning process are complicated and they need external support. Collaboration scripts are commonly used to structure and coordinate the learning process; and portfolios have shown to be useful for capturing and monitoring students’ inquiry processes.
3. Design and evaluation of the CSCL environment 3.1. Context The CSCL environment was designed to facilitate two cohorts of students to collectively complete the final assignment in the course entitled ICT for engaged learning at the NIE (National Institute of Education) in Singapore. One cohort was pursuing diplomas in education and the other was continuing with their post graduate diplomas. They would become Primary or Secondary school teachers after they graduated from the NIE. This course was a core module for all students majoring in different subjects. It ran once a week of 2 h each and lasted for 12 weeks. All tutorials were conducted in computer labs. One of the learning objectives of the course was that students would be able to develop an ICTbased learning package through group collaboration.
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The final assignment of this course was group work. The students in pairs were to design an ICT-based learning package. The resources in the learning package could be in any form such as PPT, Flash, or web pages. This assignment was to be completed within 6 weeks, during which the students had face-to-face tutorials as usual. They were given about half an hour in each tutorial to discuss and work on the final project. Also, they needed to work on the project after class. This assignment carried 60% of the total marks. The total number of students taking this course in the July 2007 semester was about 1350. They were divided into 56 tutorial groups of about 24 students each. The average ages of the two cohorts were about 22 and 25, respectively. Four classes (two from each cohort) taught by the author participated in this study. The majority of students in a class majored in the same subject, but a few might be from different subjects. 3.2. Design The CSCL learning environment adopted the following strategies to promote individual accountability, positive interdependence, coordination and monitoring learning processes. 3.2.1. Friendship Rather than the instructor assigned students into different groups, the students were allowed to choose their friends from the same class as partners for this assignment. Although this course was conducted in the first semester after they enrolled to the teacher training programs, they had gone through a one-week orientation and most of them who had the same subject knew each other well. We assumed that they had built certain friendship before the course started, and the friendship would help to establish equality. 3.2.2. Meaningful learning tasks To make the learning task more relevant to them, the instructor did not ask the participants to work on a task that was related to this ICT course, but rather each group was encouraged to choose a topic from their mutual subjects such as Physics or Math for the final project. In case they taught different subjects, they were allowed to shift to another class or choose a topic that was relevant to both of them. Furthermore, to make the assignment more useful for their future teaching, they were instructed to design learning resources for school students rather than themselves to learn that topic. This would also add additional challenges to the group members as the designed materials would be used by school students who might have different abilities and preferences. 3.2.3. DriveHQ The online file storage and sharing tool DriveHQ (http://www.drivehq.com) was used to facilitate collaboration. It provides each user with a 1 G free space, in which he or she can create folders, and upload and download files. Also, it allows invited friends to share folders or files, and make comments. These features make DriveHQ to be a useful tool for collaboration. In addition, it provides free web hosting service for publishing learning resources online, which would be useful for the groups whose learning packages were in the web page format. Each participant in this study created an account in DriveHQ. One of the group members created a folder in his/her account for the final assignment and shared it with the other partner. Also, the creator gave full access rights to the partner so that both of them could upload, download, create, or delete files. This folder became a shared space for their project. In addition, the folder was further shared with the instructor and four additional peers, who had limited rights only such as viewing, commenting and downloading. 3.2.4. Progress report Based on the idea of collaboration scripts, a progress report template was created to assist group members in coordinating the collaborative learning process. This progress report combined both epistemic scripts and social scripts by focusing on task/activities and the roles of members (Hämäläinen, 2008). It included three parts: activities, rationale, and comments. The student who had just made a major revision informed the other member what changes (tasks) had been done, why these changes had been done, and what further activities ought to be carried out by them later. Also, the name of the member who created the report and the time when the report was saved were automatically recorded and displayed in the report. A copy of this progress report was put into the same folder where the current version of the project was. Table 1 shows the progress report template. 3.2.5. Product versions Built on the idea of portfolio, each group was encouraged to save every major product version they had produced in a separate folder in the shared space. They were advised to add the date of completing the version (such as ‘26.08.07’) or a serial number (such as version 1 or version 2) to the name of the folder. By investigating and comparing the product versions, group members and the instructor could track
Table 1 Progress report template. Activities
Rationale
Comments (from your partner)
1. I (We) have done the following revisions
Explain briefly why you made these revisions
2. After this, I (you may use name here) will do these you (your partner, use name if necessary) please do these 3. Anything else (timeline, or anything has not been decided yet)
Explain briefly why you think these design ideas are important
What do you think about these revisions made? Any suggestions on these design ideas?
Name: NIE. Date and Time: 6/24/2009 9:15 AM.
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Fig. 1. A group’s product versions in its shared space.
what improvement the group had made along the time. Also, the instructor could easily spot their individual contributions by using the product versions and progress reports. Fig. 1 shows a group’s product versions in its shared space. 3.3. Evaluation questions and instruments The evaluation of the CSCL environment aimed to answer the following questions: j How did the students feel the collaborative learning environment? j Did the scaffolding strategies help to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning process? j Was DriveHQ a useful tool for facilitating collaboration? Specifically, the first evaluation question aimed to find out whether group members felt the existence of individual accountability and positive interdependence in the learning environment. Qualitative data were collected from their individual reflection reports submitted at the end of the course. The second evaluation question aimed to investigate if the use of progress reports and product versions helped to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning process. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The quantitative data included the numbers of progress reports and product versions created by each group, and the qualitative data included the perceived usefulness of the progress reports and product versions by the students, which were collected from their reflection reports. The third question was to examine if the supporting tool DriveHQ helped group members to easily exchange progress reports and share product versions. Qualitative data were collected from the students’ reflection reports as well. 4. Evaluation results 4.1. How did the students feel the collaborative learning environment? More than 90% of the students reported that they worked together as a group in the process of project development. They divided workload based on their strengths and built on their individual strengths. They played significant roles and contributed fair shares to the completion of the project. Meanwhile, they learned new knowledge and skills from their group members. They felt that collaborative work provided an opportunity for them to build and enhance friendship. A majority of students chose their friends as group members. However, a few students (about 1–4) in each class who had no friends formed groups with strangers from the beginning of the project. Nevertheless, these students particularly mentioned that they became friends after the project, as they built trust and learned from each other through continuous communication and collaboration. They also reported that communication and understanding were critical factors that affected collaboration within groups. More than half students stated that at the beginning of the project, they had different views on the design of the project and conflicts often happened. Through discussions and negotiation, however, they managed to reach a consensus and thereafter they worked smoothly. In the process of developing the project, they learned how to share experiences with their partners, open their mind to positive and negative feedback, and contribute new ideas. Moreover, they learned how to respect their partners’ ideas. The students’ reflections also revealed that allowing them to determine the learning task benefited them. First, they saw the relevance of the learning task to their future teaching and hence took ownership for the task. They mentioned that the developed learning resources would be useful for school students to learn the topics and they would definitely use the developed learning resources in the future. Second, the mutual learning task offered common ground for them to easily start with the project. As a result, they could quickly make a proposal for the final project and about 80% of the groups managed to produce their first versions in 2 weeks.
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4.2. How did the progress report help to coordinate the collaborative learning process? The numbers of progress reports found in the collaborative learning environment are shown in Fig. 2. About one third of the groups (n = 16) submitted 3–4 progress reports, four groups uploaded 5–6 reports. However, about one third of the groups (n = 15) did not submit any progress report. The students’ reflection reports showed that the use of progress reports helped them in the following aspects. First, it helped group members to coordinate among themselves. Completing progress reports required them to specify their tasks and roles explicitly, which got them to identify their individual duties and responsibilities. Secondly, the progress report helped to scaffold their development of the project. Completing the progress report required them to write down the rationales for the design ideas. It got them to articulate why their artifacts were designed in such a way and hence made their ideas clearer and more explicit. Also, through this process, group members would be easier to build up a mutual platform for meaning negotiation and understanding. Thirdly, the progress report helped them to organize their developmental processes. By using the progress report, they could schedule what to do next. More than half of the students stated that they used the progress report as a timeline, which helped them to meet the project deadline. Also, the use of progress report helped them to keep track of what had been done and what needed to be carried out further. Five students reported that by looking at the completed progress reports and product versions, they felt a sense of achievement as they could see how the final products were gradually improved. Nevertheless, certain students reported negative issues regarding the use of progress reports. Four students mentioned that completing progress reports for a small group of two members was redundant, as they had face-to-face meetings regularly. Everything could be decided during the meetings. Even without face-to-face meetings, they still could use mobile phones to communicate as speaking is much easier than writing. They felt that writing an additional progress report was an extra work to them. 4.3. Did the use of product versions help to monitor the collaborative learning process? Fig. 3 illustrates the number of product versions created by each group. The quantitative data show that about half groups (n = 26) uploaded one version of their projects into their group spaces. A total of 12 groups uploaded 4–6 versions of their projects, and two groups created seven and eight versions each. Further analysis showed a high correlation between the number of product versions and the number of progress reports produced by the groups. For instance, the KumarBalan group (as shown in Fig. 1) created a higher number (n = 7) of folders for product versions. Similarly, a higher number (n = 5) of progress reports were saved in the folders to summarize what had been done and what needed to be done in the following step. In addition, students in the groups which had higher number of product versions and progress reports commented
Fig. 2. Progress reports created by groups.
30 26
Number of groups
25 20 15 10
6
5
6 2
0 1
2
3
4
4 5 Number of versions
2 6
Fig. 3. Product versions created by groups.
11 7
8
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Fig. 4. A product version created by a group of students.
that by using an online shared space, they could modify, delete, or add files freely before the other members downloaded the files. An obvious advantage was that product updating did not affect the other members immediately. The use of product versions helped to monitor how the final product was gradually developed. For example, in the elizabethteo group space as shown in Fig. 4, five folders were created to save the product versions. The folder captions (revisionsep26, revisionOct3,. . .) clearly show the dates on which the folders were created and the ‘create time’ added by the system further confirmed the reliability of the dates provided by the students. By checking the product versions, the instructor could easily identify the progress of the final project. In addition, the use of product versions together with progress reports helped the instructor to monitor their individual contributions. For example, the 1st progress report of the elizabethteo group saved in revisionsep26 folder was co-created by Yashi and Elizabeth, which indicated that they brainstormed and came up with design ideas together. In the progress report, they mentioned that after this version, Yashi would ‘edit the bully letters found from various web sources to make them more localized’ and ‘work on the powerpoint presentation with instructions.’ Meanwhile, Elizabeth would ‘set up the blog and post up the letters’ and ‘look at the powerpoint done by Yashi and make necessary amendments.’ The following product version (revisionOct3) included a draft PowerPoint presentation and the weblog address was on one of the slides, meaning Yashi and Elizabeth really contributed to this product version. The 2nd progress report further confirmed the effort they had made. 4.4. Was DriveHQ a useful tool for facilitating collaboration? The students’ reflection reports showed that the use of DriveHQ helped them to backup files. By creating various folders in the shared space, a group of students could store their various versions of the final project in the shared space. This helped them to prevent from losing data. Also, they could easily retrieve older versions if needed. It also helped to coordinate with each other. The shared space allowed group members to make comments to specific files or leave messages to the shared space. Once a version of the project was uploaded, the member who uploaded the version might leave a note to let the
Fig. 5. Comments a group received in its shared space.
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other member know a new version was available. The partner could thereafter download and work on it. Similarly, a message could be posted back to the shared space to let the first member know a new round of revision had been started. Through the support of the DriveHQ, the group members managed to communicate and coordinate with each other. In addition, DriveHQ enabled each group to collect additional comments from their peers. Fig. 5 shows a portion of the comments that the Kangteckbeng group received. The comments indicate that besides encouragement, their peers also gave constructive suggestions on how to improve the proposal or the project. For example, the student amanda82sg commented ‘‘Interesting lesson and quite detailed proposal. Maybe you can consider how you (are) going to access their learning at the end.’ Such comments provided a different aspect for this group to consider and helped the group to improve their product. However, the students also reported some limitations regarding DriveHQ as a supporting tool. They commonly indicated that its communication function was insufficient. It did not support synchronous chats or asynchronous online discussions. As the users could not create discussion forums inside, they had to communicate through face-to-face discussions, msn or email. The way of communication in DriveHQ was not that natural. In addition, they met some technical difficulties. For example, a number of students (n = 12) mentioned that they did not know how to upload a complete folder. Consequently they had to upload files one by one, which was rather inconvenient. Eight students stated that they missed certain comments, as some were listed at the bottom of the shared space while the rest were attached to specific files, which could be viewed only after the files were clicked. Four additional students complained that the access speed was slow and they preferred using flash drives to exchange files. 5. Discussion The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether the collaborative learning environment designed based on the strategies of friendship and meaningful learning tasks could help to promote individual accountability and positive interdependence, and whether the use of progress reports and product versions could help to coordinate and monitor students’ learning processes. In this concluding section, some issues involved in this study are to be discussed. This study supports the notion that instruction support is crucial for effective collaboration to take place, as collaborative effort may not automatically emerge in a CSCL environment (Hämäläinen, 2008; Järvelä et al., 2004; Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004). This study showed that forming groups by friendship enabled the students to maintain a warm atmosphere and close working relationship, which helped to build equality and a sense of community among group members. Additionally, making learning tasks meaningful enabled them to see the relevance of the task to their future teaching needs and they took ownership for the learning task. This study confirms that forming groups by friendship and making learning tasks meaningful to participants can assist in building individual accountability and positive interdependence. It seems that coordinating and monitoring the learning process is not only a necessity but also a challenge for CSCL (cf. Barron, 2000). In this study, several strategies were applied to coordinate and monitor the learning process. These strategies included developing product versions, writing progress reports, and making comments. To a great extent, these strategies helped to coordinate and monitor group collaboration. However, some groups did not create any product versions or progress reports. No evidence showed that they worked collectively in the CSCL environment. Nevertheless, their reflection reports showed that they actually worked together on the project. They used other ways such as face-to-face discussions, email or phone calls to coordinate. This result implied that the strategies applied in this study did not fully capture the collaborative learning process. Additional strategies might be needed to further coordinate and monitor the learning process. One way would be to grade the participants on the use of the strategies. Grading them would stimulate them to follow the strategies more closely. A more ideal way would be to make coordination and monitoring activities more natural in the collaborative learning process. For instance, coordination would be easier if they could record and upload their voices or forward their email messages to the learning environment directly; Monitoring the learning process would be more natural if a computer program like the wiki could be used to automatically track what has been changed on a piece of work along the time. It is more likely that there is a reciprocal relationship between collaboration and friendship. Research has shown that friendship is helpful for collaborative learning, as friends do not need to negotiate the rules of collaboration (cf. Jones & Issroff, 2005). This study reveals that pleasant collaboration between partners can promote the establishment of friendship as well. The groups consisting of strangers in this study mentioned that they became good friends after completing the final project. This finding indicates that friendship and collaboration have the potential to support each other in CSCL. Communication seems to be an essential component of a collaborative learning environment. DriveHQ is a useful tool for file storing and sharing. However, its communicative function is limited. The group members had to interact with each other through other tools, such as mobile phones or discussion forums. To a certain extent, the lack of communication support in the learning environment prevented effective collaboration happening. In addition, even in a tool rich environment, social interaction may not happen frequently due to the fact that most computer-mediated tools support text-based communication only (Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004). This study suggests that an effective collaborative learning environment should involve sufficient communication support, and ideally the communication is implemented in a natural way via text, spoken language, visual expressions, or a combination of them. Additionally, this study implies that a collaborative learning environment might be more useful for bigger groups. In this study, some students mentioned that they could easily communicate using mobile phones or email. Sharing files and communicating through the support of an online environment were redundant. To a certain extent this is true as communication and coordination are relatively easier in smaller groups. Future research can be conducted on using a collaborative learning environment for larger groups. References Arvaja, M., Häkkinen, P., Eteläpelto, A., & Rasku-Puttonen, H. (2000). Collaborative processes during report writing of a science learning project: The nature of discourse as a function of task requirements. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 15(4), 455–466. Barron, B. (2000). Achieving coordination in collaborative problem-solving groups. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(4), 403–436.
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Dimensions of peer evaluation, overall satisfaction and overall evaluation: An investigation in a group task environment. Journal of Education for Business, 79(4), 225–232. Pozzi, F., Manca, S., Persico, D., & Sarti, L. (2007). A general framework for tracking and analysing learning processes in computer-supported collaborative learning environments. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(2), 169–179. Rainer, J., & Matthews, M. (2002). Ownership of learning in teacher education. Action in Teacher Education, 24(1), 22–30. Rovai, A. P. (2001). Classroom community at a distance. A comparative analysis of two ALN-based university programs. Internet and Higher Education, 4(2), 105–118. Slavin, R. E. (1990). Cooperative learning: Theory, research, and practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Strom, P. S., & Strom, R. D. (2002). Overcoming limitations of cooperative learning among community college students. 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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Computers & Education journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu
Design and evaluation of a collaborative learning environment Qiyun Wang Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 26 August 2008 Received in revised form 22 May 2009 Accepted 22 May 2009
Keywords: Cooperative/collaborative learning Interactive learning environments Learning communities Lifelong learning
a b s t r a c t Collaboration becomes an essential competency in the current knowledge society. In this study, a collaborative learning environment was designed to facilitate students in group collaboration. Instructional support strategies of friendship and meaningful learning tasks were applied to promote collaboration. Scaffolding strategies such as writing progress reports and developing product versions were used to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning environment. In addition, the online file sharing tool DriveHQ was used to facilitate collaboration. Four classes of students used the learning environment to complete their final project in pairs. Results showed friendship and meaningful learning tasks helped to promote individual accountability and positive interdependence, and the use of progress reports and product versions was useful for coordinating and monitoring the learning process. However, additional strategies might be needed for more effective collaboration to take place. Issues involved in this study are discussed. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction In the new information age, work becomes more knowledge-based, interdisciplinary and complicated. It is hardly possible for an individual to complete a sophisticated task without the help of others. The ability to work collaboratively hence becomes highly valued in the present workplace (Barron, 2000). Students ought to learn how to work collectively when they are in schools so that the transition from the school to the workplace is less daunting (Chai & Tan, 2009). Coordinating group members’ collaboration in the learning process is crucial for computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Placing students in groups and telling them to work together does not mean collaboration will naturally happen (Johnson & Johnson, 1994). It is critical that the group work is sufficiently coordinated among group members so that each one makes an equal contribution to the success of the whole work. Or, they may work on different versions, which are hard to synchronize later. Even worse, they may work towards different directions. A collaborative learning environment should support group members’ coordination so that they complete the task more efficiently. Students are often individually assessed when they participate in collaborative work in schools. Little attention has been given to examining how collective learning can be effectively assessed in a CSCL setting (van Aalst & Chan, 2007). Teachers often assume that group members have made equal contributions to the task completion and give the same grade to each member, which is unfair as it may make better students feel resentful and send wrong messages to slackers (Paswan & Gollakota, 2004). Monitoring closely the learning process so that a fair assessment can be administered becomes essential. In addition, monitoring the learning process enables teachers to adjust learning activities promptly and provide appropriate support when needed (Pozzi, Manca, Persico, & Sarti, 2007). In this study, four classes of students participated in a project in pairs. A collaborative learning environment was designed to facilitate them in group collaboration. A set of instructional support strategies such as friendship and meaningful learning tasks was applied to promote collaboration. In addition, some scaffolding strategies were used to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning process. A progress report was used to coordinate group members’ collaboration. Also, each group was encouraged to create various folders to save their product versions. The aim of this study was to investigate whether these strategies helped to promote collaboration, and to coordinate and monitor students’ learning effectively. 2. Conceptual framework: computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) CSCL is an emerging research field that focuses on how collaborative learning, supported by technology, can enhance peer interaction and work in groups, and how collaboration and technology facilitate sharing and distributing knowledge and expertise among community
E-mail address: [email protected] 0360-1315/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.05.023
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members (Lipponen, Hakkarainen, & Paavola, 2004). Although much research literature in CSCL reports mixed or negative findings (cf. Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004), numerous research studies have demonstrated that group work generally leads to better learning outcomes than individual work (Barron, 2000; Lipponen et al., 2004; Neo, 2003). This section elaborates on two important features of CSCL, which are individual accountability and positive interdependence, and the importance of coordinating and monitoring the collaborative learning process. 2.1. Individual accountability A group is a combination of individuals who usually possesses different knowledge and skills. Because of the existence of cognitive diversity, group members have the possibility to share expertise from different perspectives, supplement one another, and make reciprocal contributions to the task completion (Brown & Campione, 1994; Järvelä, Häkkinen, Arvaja, & Leinonen, 2004). On the other hand, completing a complicated group work heavily depends on the individual contributions of its members, and each member is accountable for his or her share of the work. In an ideally collaborative situation, each individual plays a critical role and makes an equal contribution to the group work rather than one works for all. Individual accountability is the measurement of whether the contribution of a group member has helped to achieve the group’s overall goals (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1998). With the presence of individual accountability, students often take ownership for the learning task and for learning (Kirschner, Strijbos, Kreijns, & Beers, 2004; Moallem, 2003; Neo, 2003). As a result, they take more responsibilities, find more personal values, and are more likely to become agents in their own learning (Milner-Bolotin, 2001). However, Rainer and Matthews (2002) remind that ownership cannot be given. It should be promoted by providing conditions or strategies to encourage them to own learning. Making the learning task meaningful is a useful strategy to promote individual accountability, as it enables group members to see the value of the learning task and its relevance to their needs (Arvaja, Häkkinen, Eteläpelto, & Rasku-Puttonen, 2000). This will result in students who take more ownership for the learning task and make more contributions to the task completion. Equality is another useful strategy for establishing individual accountability among group members. Research shows when team members perceive that the others in the group have equal status in terms of abilities and resources, they tend to make more equal contributions, become more willing to interact with peers, and the atmosphere becomes more open (Damon & Phelps, 1989). However, equality can sometimes result in conflict, as they have equal rights and may not be able to reach consensus within a short time period (Strom & Strom, 2002). In this case, friendship may help to avoid conflicts to happen. Additional instructional strategies can be applied to foster individual accountability as well. For instance, clearly specifying the individual roles or responsibilities of group members by using jigsaw or Student Team Achievement Division may help to increase individual accountability (Slavin, 1990). Also, assessments focusing more on the learning process can stimulate students to put more effort into the learning task and make more individual contributions (Graham & Misanchuk, 2004). Furthermore, research suggests that individual accountability increases when the performance of individual students is assessed, and the results are given back to the group (Vuorinen, Tarkka, & Meretoja, 2000). Other mechanisms such as random checking, or individual skill demonstration also help to foster individual accountability. 2.2. Positive interdependence Only when a rain drop falls into the ocean will it never go dry. Similarly, in the information society, no one knows it all. People are critically dependent on each other to get job done (Lipponen, 2002). To a certain extent, ‘collaborative learning is not just nice, it is necessary for survival’ (Brown, 1994, p.10). Positive interdependence links group members together. The contribution of each individual is counted for the success of the team work. One cannot succeed unless all members succeed; they either sink or swim together (Johnson et al., 1998). Mutuality is often demonstrated in a positively interdependent learning environment. Mutuality refers to the extent to which there is reciprocity and balance in interaction so that all members can contribute and be heard (Barron, 2000). A strong feeling of a sense of community helps to establish and increase positive interdependence among group members (Kirschner, 2002). Research shows that good working relationship helps to maintain a community, and good relationship is often built not on-task but rather off-task (Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004; Rovai, 2001). A close social affinity such as friendship among group members can support the establishment of good working relationship, as they do not need to negotiate the rules of collaboration and they have built ways of working which are implicitly understood rather than explicitly discussed (Vass, 2002). Therefore, keeping a close friendship among group members is crucial for the establishment of positive interdependence. Positive interdependence can also be stimulated through other instructional support on resources, rewards, roles, or the environment (Brush, 1998). For instance, teachers may give specific resources to different individuals in the group to promote resource interdependence; besides individual scores on an exam, individual students can be given a certain number of points if all group members score at or above a certain grade to raise reward interdependence. In conclusion, individual accountability and positive interdependence are two salient features of collaborative learning. They are interrelated to each other. For effective collaborative learning to take place, every member should play an active role in the learning process and contributes his/her share to the group work. Also, their contributions are essential to the success of their individuals and of the group as a whole. They are equally important in the learning process and over emphasizing one has the danger of undermining the cohesiveness of the group or subjective initiatives (Graham & Misanchuk, 2004). A number of strategies can be applied to promote individual accountability and positive interdependence, such as making the learning task more meaningful, or building equality and friendship among group members. 2.3. Coordination Individual accountability and positive interdependence call for coordination. In a collaborative learning environment, group members identify and build on their individual strengths so that everyone makes a great contribution to the learning task. Furthermore, their individual effort must be synchronized to ensure that they all work towards the same direction and make coherent contributions.
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External support is needed for effective coordination to take place. The complexity of authentic problems involved in a collaborative learning task poses difficulties to the students, who must continuously negotiate plans and share understanding. They often struggle with organizing evidence and interpreting results, and get lost or overwhelmed by the large amount of data or information. They need external scaffolding strategies to organize, coordinate, and reflect upon on-going ideas through the long-term investigation process (Land & ZembalSaul, 2003). A number of supporting strategies or tools for coordination and collaboration have been reported in literature. For instance, Lin, Hmelo, Kinzer, and Secules (1999) used the social discourse (dialogue with peers and instructors), process prompts (questions to help students organize and externalize their thinking), and process displays (intermediate processes they have engaged in) to support reflection and coordination. Barron (2000) employed workbooks to structure students’ collaboration through the problem. In addition, students may use phones, emails, or short messages to communicate and coordinate with one another. They may also use web-based supporting tools, such as bulletin boards or shared workspaces to share resources, negotiate meanings and coordinate with others. Collaboration scripts have been commonly used to structure and coordinate collaborative processes (Dillenbourg, 2002; Hämäläinen, 2008; O’Donnell, Dansereau, Hall, & Rocklin, 1987). A collaboration script is a set of instructions prescribing how students should interact and collaborate and how they should solve the problem (Dillenbourg, 2002). The use of a collaboration script helps students to reduce the uncertainty about coordination efforts (Mäkitalo, Weinberger, Häkkinen, Järvelä, & Fischer, 2004), because from which they know how to behave and what to expect in particular situations. Additionally, a script supports students’ development of meta-cognitive, motivational, or emotional competencies (Kollar, Fischer, & Hesse, 2003). Epistemic scripts and social scripts are often used to facilitate collaboration (Hämäläinen, 2008). The epistemic script specifies and sequences knowledge construction activities and aims to facilitate expertlike problem solving behavior by engaging learners in epistemic activities (Dufresne, Gerace, Hardiman, & Mestre, 1992). It instructs students in how to deal with tasks. It helps group members know what information they should be looking for and how they can use the information to solve the problem. A social script specifies the ways they interact with other group members by assigning clear roles and responsibilities. Effective use of epistemic scripts and social scripts helps to structure and enhance collaborative processes (Weinberger, Ertl, Fischer, & Mandl, 2005). 2.4. Monitoring learning processes Learning is a highly interactive and dynamic process. For effective learning to take place in a CSCL learning environment, monitoring closely how students collaborate in the process is crucial. To students, keeping track of what has been established and what needs to be further revised makes the learning process be carried out in a more organized and efficient way. To teachers, monitoring the learning process allows them to identify strengths and weaknesses of the instructional design or the learning environment so that they can adjust the learning process promptly for unexpected needs or improve the curriculum further in the future (Pozzi et al., 2007). Monitoring the collaborative learning process can also help teachers to keep track on students’ on-going performance so that any pitfall leading to potential failures can be immediately diagnosed and appropriate support can be provided. Teachers need to collect and analyze data constantly to keep the learning process under control. They must ensure the learning process is going on smoothly and proper decisions are made when needed (Chai & Tan, 2009). Additionally, monitoring the learning process enables the teacher to assess students’ individual and group learning more accurately. The prevailing views of learning that emphasize on the social, distributed, and collective nature of learning result in a need to capture, assess and characterize both individual and collaborative aspects of knowledge construction in CSCL (Chan & Van Aalst, 2004). Keeping track on the collaborative learning process allows the teacher to discern students’ individual contributions and to assess them fairly. However, monitoring the learning process is not a simple activity. It often requires external support to keep track on what has happened and what is going on in the learning process (Land & Zembal-Saul, 2003). Research reveals that many ICT tools can be used to monitor the learning process. For instance, the use of weblogs enables students to externalize their thoughts in an on-going manner. Posts in a weblog are organized in a reverse chronological order, with the most recent post on the top and the oldest post at the bottom. Tracking the weblog postings helps to facilitate the awareness of how one constructs meanings over time (Fiedler, 2003; Wang & Woo, 2008). E-portfolio is also a useful tool for tracking and assessing learning processes. Van Aalst and Chan (2007) used e-portfolios to assess and identify individual and collective aspects of knowledge building, and the results showed that portfolios reflected distributed cognition and demonstrated how students made progress and advanced their community knowledge collectively. Land and Zembal-Saul (2003) used the Progress Portfolio software to capture students’ on-going investigation. Their findings confirmed the importance of monitoring the learning process. In conclusion, coordinating and monitoring learning processes is crucial for individual accountability and positive interdependence to take place in a collaborative learning process. However, coordination and monitoring the learning process are complicated and they need external support. Collaboration scripts are commonly used to structure and coordinate the learning process; and portfolios have shown to be useful for capturing and monitoring students’ inquiry processes.
3. Design and evaluation of the CSCL environment 3.1. Context The CSCL environment was designed to facilitate two cohorts of students to collectively complete the final assignment in the course entitled ICT for engaged learning at the NIE (National Institute of Education) in Singapore. One cohort was pursuing diplomas in education and the other was continuing with their post graduate diplomas. They would become Primary or Secondary school teachers after they graduated from the NIE. This course was a core module for all students majoring in different subjects. It ran once a week of 2 h each and lasted for 12 weeks. All tutorials were conducted in computer labs. One of the learning objectives of the course was that students would be able to develop an ICTbased learning package through group collaboration.
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The final assignment of this course was group work. The students in pairs were to design an ICT-based learning package. The resources in the learning package could be in any form such as PPT, Flash, or web pages. This assignment was to be completed within 6 weeks, during which the students had face-to-face tutorials as usual. They were given about half an hour in each tutorial to discuss and work on the final project. Also, they needed to work on the project after class. This assignment carried 60% of the total marks. The total number of students taking this course in the July 2007 semester was about 1350. They were divided into 56 tutorial groups of about 24 students each. The average ages of the two cohorts were about 22 and 25, respectively. Four classes (two from each cohort) taught by the author participated in this study. The majority of students in a class majored in the same subject, but a few might be from different subjects. 3.2. Design The CSCL learning environment adopted the following strategies to promote individual accountability, positive interdependence, coordination and monitoring learning processes. 3.2.1. Friendship Rather than the instructor assigned students into different groups, the students were allowed to choose their friends from the same class as partners for this assignment. Although this course was conducted in the first semester after they enrolled to the teacher training programs, they had gone through a one-week orientation and most of them who had the same subject knew each other well. We assumed that they had built certain friendship before the course started, and the friendship would help to establish equality. 3.2.2. Meaningful learning tasks To make the learning task more relevant to them, the instructor did not ask the participants to work on a task that was related to this ICT course, but rather each group was encouraged to choose a topic from their mutual subjects such as Physics or Math for the final project. In case they taught different subjects, they were allowed to shift to another class or choose a topic that was relevant to both of them. Furthermore, to make the assignment more useful for their future teaching, they were instructed to design learning resources for school students rather than themselves to learn that topic. This would also add additional challenges to the group members as the designed materials would be used by school students who might have different abilities and preferences. 3.2.3. DriveHQ The online file storage and sharing tool DriveHQ (http://www.drivehq.com) was used to facilitate collaboration. It provides each user with a 1 G free space, in which he or she can create folders, and upload and download files. Also, it allows invited friends to share folders or files, and make comments. These features make DriveHQ to be a useful tool for collaboration. In addition, it provides free web hosting service for publishing learning resources online, which would be useful for the groups whose learning packages were in the web page format. Each participant in this study created an account in DriveHQ. One of the group members created a folder in his/her account for the final assignment and shared it with the other partner. Also, the creator gave full access rights to the partner so that both of them could upload, download, create, or delete files. This folder became a shared space for their project. In addition, the folder was further shared with the instructor and four additional peers, who had limited rights only such as viewing, commenting and downloading. 3.2.4. Progress report Based on the idea of collaboration scripts, a progress report template was created to assist group members in coordinating the collaborative learning process. This progress report combined both epistemic scripts and social scripts by focusing on task/activities and the roles of members (Hämäläinen, 2008). It included three parts: activities, rationale, and comments. The student who had just made a major revision informed the other member what changes (tasks) had been done, why these changes had been done, and what further activities ought to be carried out by them later. Also, the name of the member who created the report and the time when the report was saved were automatically recorded and displayed in the report. A copy of this progress report was put into the same folder where the current version of the project was. Table 1 shows the progress report template. 3.2.5. Product versions Built on the idea of portfolio, each group was encouraged to save every major product version they had produced in a separate folder in the shared space. They were advised to add the date of completing the version (such as ‘26.08.07’) or a serial number (such as version 1 or version 2) to the name of the folder. By investigating and comparing the product versions, group members and the instructor could track
Table 1 Progress report template. Activities
Rationale
Comments (from your partner)
1. I (We) have done the following revisions
Explain briefly why you made these revisions
2. After this, I (you may use name here) will do these you (your partner, use name if necessary) please do these 3. Anything else (timeline, or anything has not been decided yet)
Explain briefly why you think these design ideas are important
What do you think about these revisions made? Any suggestions on these design ideas?
Name: NIE. Date and Time: 6/24/2009 9:15 AM.
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Fig. 1. A group’s product versions in its shared space.
what improvement the group had made along the time. Also, the instructor could easily spot their individual contributions by using the product versions and progress reports. Fig. 1 shows a group’s product versions in its shared space. 3.3. Evaluation questions and instruments The evaluation of the CSCL environment aimed to answer the following questions: j How did the students feel the collaborative learning environment? j Did the scaffolding strategies help to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning process? j Was DriveHQ a useful tool for facilitating collaboration? Specifically, the first evaluation question aimed to find out whether group members felt the existence of individual accountability and positive interdependence in the learning environment. Qualitative data were collected from their individual reflection reports submitted at the end of the course. The second evaluation question aimed to investigate if the use of progress reports and product versions helped to coordinate and monitor the collaborative learning process. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The quantitative data included the numbers of progress reports and product versions created by each group, and the qualitative data included the perceived usefulness of the progress reports and product versions by the students, which were collected from their reflection reports. The third question was to examine if the supporting tool DriveHQ helped group members to easily exchange progress reports and share product versions. Qualitative data were collected from the students’ reflection reports as well. 4. Evaluation results 4.1. How did the students feel the collaborative learning environment? More than 90% of the students reported that they worked together as a group in the process of project development. They divided workload based on their strengths and built on their individual strengths. They played significant roles and contributed fair shares to the completion of the project. Meanwhile, they learned new knowledge and skills from their group members. They felt that collaborative work provided an opportunity for them to build and enhance friendship. A majority of students chose their friends as group members. However, a few students (about 1–4) in each class who had no friends formed groups with strangers from the beginning of the project. Nevertheless, these students particularly mentioned that they became friends after the project, as they built trust and learned from each other through continuous communication and collaboration. They also reported that communication and understanding were critical factors that affected collaboration within groups. More than half students stated that at the beginning of the project, they had different views on the design of the project and conflicts often happened. Through discussions and negotiation, however, they managed to reach a consensus and thereafter they worked smoothly. In the process of developing the project, they learned how to share experiences with their partners, open their mind to positive and negative feedback, and contribute new ideas. Moreover, they learned how to respect their partners’ ideas. The students’ reflections also revealed that allowing them to determine the learning task benefited them. First, they saw the relevance of the learning task to their future teaching and hence took ownership for the task. They mentioned that the developed learning resources would be useful for school students to learn the topics and they would definitely use the developed learning resources in the future. Second, the mutual learning task offered common ground for them to easily start with the project. As a result, they could quickly make a proposal for the final project and about 80% of the groups managed to produce their first versions in 2 weeks.
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4.2. How did the progress report help to coordinate the collaborative learning process? The numbers of progress reports found in the collaborative learning environment are shown in Fig. 2. About one third of the groups (n = 16) submitted 3–4 progress reports, four groups uploaded 5–6 reports. However, about one third of the groups (n = 15) did not submit any progress report. The students’ reflection reports showed that the use of progress reports helped them in the following aspects. First, it helped group members to coordinate among themselves. Completing progress reports required them to specify their tasks and roles explicitly, which got them to identify their individual duties and responsibilities. Secondly, the progress report helped to scaffold their development of the project. Completing the progress report required them to write down the rationales for the design ideas. It got them to articulate why their artifacts were designed in such a way and hence made their ideas clearer and more explicit. Also, through this process, group members would be easier to build up a mutual platform for meaning negotiation and understanding. Thirdly, the progress report helped them to organize their developmental processes. By using the progress report, they could schedule what to do next. More than half of the students stated that they used the progress report as a timeline, which helped them to meet the project deadline. Also, the use of progress report helped them to keep track of what had been done and what needed to be carried out further. Five students reported that by looking at the completed progress reports and product versions, they felt a sense of achievement as they could see how the final products were gradually improved. Nevertheless, certain students reported negative issues regarding the use of progress reports. Four students mentioned that completing progress reports for a small group of two members was redundant, as they had face-to-face meetings regularly. Everything could be decided during the meetings. Even without face-to-face meetings, they still could use mobile phones to communicate as speaking is much easier than writing. They felt that writing an additional progress report was an extra work to them. 4.3. Did the use of product versions help to monitor the collaborative learning process? Fig. 3 illustrates the number of product versions created by each group. The quantitative data show that about half groups (n = 26) uploaded one version of their projects into their group spaces. A total of 12 groups uploaded 4–6 versions of their projects, and two groups created seven and eight versions each. Further analysis showed a high correlation between the number of product versions and the number of progress reports produced by the groups. For instance, the KumarBalan group (as shown in Fig. 1) created a higher number (n = 7) of folders for product versions. Similarly, a higher number (n = 5) of progress reports were saved in the folders to summarize what had been done and what needed to be done in the following step. In addition, students in the groups which had higher number of product versions and progress reports commented
Fig. 2. Progress reports created by groups.
30 26
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25 20 15 10
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5
6 2
0 1
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3
4
4 5 Number of versions
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Fig. 3. Product versions created by groups.
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Fig. 4. A product version created by a group of students.
that by using an online shared space, they could modify, delete, or add files freely before the other members downloaded the files. An obvious advantage was that product updating did not affect the other members immediately. The use of product versions helped to monitor how the final product was gradually developed. For example, in the elizabethteo group space as shown in Fig. 4, five folders were created to save the product versions. The folder captions (revisionsep26, revisionOct3,. . .) clearly show the dates on which the folders were created and the ‘create time’ added by the system further confirmed the reliability of the dates provided by the students. By checking the product versions, the instructor could easily identify the progress of the final project. In addition, the use of product versions together with progress reports helped the instructor to monitor their individual contributions. For example, the 1st progress report of the elizabethteo group saved in revisionsep26 folder was co-created by Yashi and Elizabeth, which indicated that they brainstormed and came up with design ideas together. In the progress report, they mentioned that after this version, Yashi would ‘edit the bully letters found from various web sources to make them more localized’ and ‘work on the powerpoint presentation with instructions.’ Meanwhile, Elizabeth would ‘set up the blog and post up the letters’ and ‘look at the powerpoint done by Yashi and make necessary amendments.’ The following product version (revisionOct3) included a draft PowerPoint presentation and the weblog address was on one of the slides, meaning Yashi and Elizabeth really contributed to this product version. The 2nd progress report further confirmed the effort they had made. 4.4. Was DriveHQ a useful tool for facilitating collaboration? The students’ reflection reports showed that the use of DriveHQ helped them to backup files. By creating various folders in the shared space, a group of students could store their various versions of the final project in the shared space. This helped them to prevent from losing data. Also, they could easily retrieve older versions if needed. It also helped to coordinate with each other. The shared space allowed group members to make comments to specific files or leave messages to the shared space. Once a version of the project was uploaded, the member who uploaded the version might leave a note to let the
Fig. 5. Comments a group received in its shared space.
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other member know a new version was available. The partner could thereafter download and work on it. Similarly, a message could be posted back to the shared space to let the first member know a new round of revision had been started. Through the support of the DriveHQ, the group members managed to communicate and coordinate with each other. In addition, DriveHQ enabled each group to collect additional comments from their peers. Fig. 5 shows a portion of the comments that the Kangteckbeng group received. The comments indicate that besides encouragement, their peers also gave constructive suggestions on how to improve the proposal or the project. For example, the student amanda82sg commented ‘‘Interesting lesson and quite detailed proposal. Maybe you can consider how you (are) going to access their learning at the end.’ Such comments provided a different aspect for this group to consider and helped the group to improve their product. However, the students also reported some limitations regarding DriveHQ as a supporting tool. They commonly indicated that its communication function was insufficient. It did not support synchronous chats or asynchronous online discussions. As the users could not create discussion forums inside, they had to communicate through face-to-face discussions, msn or email. The way of communication in DriveHQ was not that natural. In addition, they met some technical difficulties. For example, a number of students (n = 12) mentioned that they did not know how to upload a complete folder. Consequently they had to upload files one by one, which was rather inconvenient. Eight students stated that they missed certain comments, as some were listed at the bottom of the shared space while the rest were attached to specific files, which could be viewed only after the files were clicked. Four additional students complained that the access speed was slow and they preferred using flash drives to exchange files. 5. Discussion The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether the collaborative learning environment designed based on the strategies of friendship and meaningful learning tasks could help to promote individual accountability and positive interdependence, and whether the use of progress reports and product versions could help to coordinate and monitor students’ learning processes. In this concluding section, some issues involved in this study are to be discussed. This study supports the notion that instruction support is crucial for effective collaboration to take place, as collaborative effort may not automatically emerge in a CSCL environment (Hämäläinen, 2008; Järvelä et al., 2004; Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004). This study showed that forming groups by friendship enabled the students to maintain a warm atmosphere and close working relationship, which helped to build equality and a sense of community among group members. Additionally, making learning tasks meaningful enabled them to see the relevance of the task to their future teaching needs and they took ownership for the learning task. This study confirms that forming groups by friendship and making learning tasks meaningful to participants can assist in building individual accountability and positive interdependence. It seems that coordinating and monitoring the learning process is not only a necessity but also a challenge for CSCL (cf. Barron, 2000). In this study, several strategies were applied to coordinate and monitor the learning process. These strategies included developing product versions, writing progress reports, and making comments. To a great extent, these strategies helped to coordinate and monitor group collaboration. However, some groups did not create any product versions or progress reports. No evidence showed that they worked collectively in the CSCL environment. Nevertheless, their reflection reports showed that they actually worked together on the project. They used other ways such as face-to-face discussions, email or phone calls to coordinate. This result implied that the strategies applied in this study did not fully capture the collaborative learning process. Additional strategies might be needed to further coordinate and monitor the learning process. One way would be to grade the participants on the use of the strategies. Grading them would stimulate them to follow the strategies more closely. A more ideal way would be to make coordination and monitoring activities more natural in the collaborative learning process. For instance, coordination would be easier if they could record and upload their voices or forward their email messages to the learning environment directly; Monitoring the learning process would be more natural if a computer program like the wiki could be used to automatically track what has been changed on a piece of work along the time. It is more likely that there is a reciprocal relationship between collaboration and friendship. Research has shown that friendship is helpful for collaborative learning, as friends do not need to negotiate the rules of collaboration (cf. Jones & Issroff, 2005). This study reveals that pleasant collaboration between partners can promote the establishment of friendship as well. The groups consisting of strangers in this study mentioned that they became good friends after completing the final project. This finding indicates that friendship and collaboration have the potential to support each other in CSCL. Communication seems to be an essential component of a collaborative learning environment. DriveHQ is a useful tool for file storing and sharing. However, its communicative function is limited. The group members had to interact with each other through other tools, such as mobile phones or discussion forums. To a certain extent, the lack of communication support in the learning environment prevented effective collaboration happening. In addition, even in a tool rich environment, social interaction may not happen frequently due to the fact that most computer-mediated tools support text-based communication only (Kreijns & Kirschner, 2004). This study suggests that an effective collaborative learning environment should involve sufficient communication support, and ideally the communication is implemented in a natural way via text, spoken language, visual expressions, or a combination of them. Additionally, this study implies that a collaborative learning environment might be more useful for bigger groups. In this study, some students mentioned that they could easily communicate using mobile phones or email. Sharing files and communicating through the support of an online environment were redundant. To a certain extent this is true as communication and coordination are relatively easier in smaller groups. Future research can be conducted on using a collaborative learning environment for larger groups. References Arvaja, M., Häkkinen, P., Eteläpelto, A., & Rasku-Puttonen, H. (2000). Collaborative processes during report writing of a science learning project: The nature of discourse as a function of task requirements. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 15(4), 455–466. Barron, B. (2000). Achieving coordination in collaborative problem-solving groups. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(4), 403–436.
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