Supporting collaborative learning in engineering design

In team-based project courses, collaborative learning is the dominant learning mode. Collaborative learning has been shown to increase individual learning through co-construction and personal reflection. Rapid adoption of web-based communication and mobile computing by students provide opportunities to take advantage of computer-supported collaboration for engineering education. We present preliminary findings on a computer environment, the Kiva Web, that supports the activities of group collaboration for interdisciplinary engineering design teams. We have employed methods from human–computer interaction (HCI) to iterate on the design in the context of use. In this paper, we discuss the evolution of the Kiva Web and the implications for both student design teams and professional design teams.     

The role of collective efficacy, cognitive quality, and task cohesion in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL)

Research has suggested that CSCL environments contain fewer social context clues, resulting in various group processes, performance or motivation. This study thus attempts to explore the relationship among collective efficacy, group processes (i.e. task cohesion, cognitive quality) and collaborative performance in a CSCL environment. A total of 75 Taiwanese college students (divided into 25 groups) participated in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied for data analysis. The results indicate that collective efficacy significantly predicted task cohesion but not cognitive quality in the CSCL environment. For the role of group processes in performance, both task cohesion and cognitive quality significantly predicted group performance, but cognitive quality predicted better than task cohesion. In addition, for the predictive capability of prior performance, task cohesion, and cognitive quality in collective efficacy, the results showed that only task cohesion predicted subsequent collective efficacy significantly in the CSCL environment.     

Computer-supported team-based learning: The impact of motivation,enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes

The benefits of teamwork and collaboration have long been advocated by many educational theories, such as constructivist and social learning models. Among the various applications of collaborative learning, the iterative team-based learning (TBL) process proposed by Michaelsen, Fink, and Knight (2002) has been successfully used in the classroom without computer support. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation results of a classroom application of the TBL process, which was modified to include computer mediation. We call this process computer-supported team-based learning (CS-TBL). This work extends learning in small teams from the traditional classroom to the hybrid classroom where students meet both face-to-face and online by emphasizing the importance of online team interactions. The outcomes are assessed through an evaluation model that considers the impact of motivation, enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes. The study results indicate that motivation influences the relationship between team interactions and perceived learning. Enjoyment is affected by motivation and perceptions of team members’ contributions, with the implication that students who perceive that the team interactions are adding value to their education will better enjoy learning and will experience higher-level learning outcomes.     

The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning

Generally, high-school students have been characterized as bored and disengaged from the learning process. However, certain educational designs promote excitement and engagement. Game-based learning is assumed to be such a design. In this study, the concept of flow is used as a framework to investigate student engagement in the process of gaming and to explain effects on game performance and student learning outcome. Frequency 1550, a game about medieval Amsterdam merging digital and urban play spaces, has been examined as an exemplar of game-based learning. This 1-day game was played in teams by 216 students of three schools for secondary education in Amsterdam. Generally, these students show flow with their game activities, although they were distracted by solving problems in technology and navigation. Flow was shown to have an effect on their game performance, but not on their learning outcome. Distractive activities and being occupied with competition between teams did show an effect on the learning outcome of students: the fewer students were distracted from the game and the more they were engaged in group competition, the more students learned about the medieval history of Amsterdam. Consequences for the design of game-based learning in secondary education are discussed.     

Research on group awareness of networked collaboration within the design team and between teams

Group awareness is the critical content of collaboration in a networked collaborative design team, and it is a meaningful way to study teamwork efficiency. However, existing methods that describe awareness information are not comprehensive. They all set an ideal collaborative environment of the single role and single activity, ignoring the bidirectional and overlapping of the collaboration process. To meet this gap, a novel group awareness method for the networked collaboration design team is proposed in this paper from the actual collaborative process. Firstly, the awareness information granularity in the joint work of the networked collaborative design team is described in detail, and the group awareness model is established. Then, the intra- and inter-team collaboration of networked collaborative design team is quantified, and correspondingly, combined with the degree of cooperation between members, a method for solving the group awareness ability of intra- and inter-team association by adopting awareness calculation is presented. Last, to illustrate the feasibility of the suggested approach, a vehicle interior collaborative design task is taken as an example. This study can provide practical guidance for a related design service platform to optimize team collaboration efficiency and select team members objectively and fairly.     

Exploring the antecedents of team performance in collaborative learning of computer software

As teamwork becomes common in computer software learning, there is an increasing need to study factors contributing to team performance. To this pursuit, the concept of collective efficacy offers great potential to researchers of information systems (IS). Drawing upon social cognitive theory (SCT), this study examines the relationships among computer collective efficacy (CCE), outcome expectations and team performance in the context of collaborative learning. Computer collective efficacy is further divided into two constructs, general CCE and specific CCE. Their causal relationships with two other constructs, performance and outcome expectations, are then investigated using longitudinal data collected from 188 groups of students of an 18-week computer software course. The results indicate that a team’s software learning performance is strongly influenced by specific CCE and outcome expectations, which in turn are influenced by prior performance and general CCE. Finally, prior performance of a group has no direct impact on its subsequent performance.     

Reviewing the quality of awareness support in collaborative applications

Awareness to users is a valuable feature of a collaborative system. Therefore, the designers of a system of this type may find it useful to receive hints on the awareness support provided by the system when it is under development or evolution. This paper proposes a tool for their use to obtain suggestions on the awareness features provided by the system and those not currently supported by it. The considered kinds of awareness were obtained from a review of a significant number of proposals from the literature. The tool is based on a checklist of design elements related to these awareness types to be applied by the application designer. The construction of this checklist was done as follows. The process started with an analysis of the types of awareness to be provided. This step ended with 54 selected design elements and six awareness types. Experts on the development of collaborative systems used their experience to provide correlations between the design elements and the types of awareness previously identified, thus encapsulating their expertise within the checklist. The proposal was applied to three existing collaborative systems and the results are presented. The obtained results suggest that the checklist is adequate to provide helpful hints that may be used to improve an application's awareness support.     

Student perceptions of collaborative learning,social presence and satisfaction in a blended learning environment: Relationships and critical factors

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships of the students’ perceived levels of collaborative learning, social presence and overall satisfaction in a blended learning environment. This research studied the relationship of these three variables and identified critical factors related to them. The participants were 48 graduate students who took a blended-format course in health education and worked on a collaborative group project related to the development of a comprehensive HIV-AIDS prevention plan. Data was collected from the Student Perception Questionnaire and face-to-face interviews. The analysis of quantitative data indicated that student perceptions of collaborative learning have statistically positive relationships with perceptions of social presence and satisfaction. This means that students who perceived high levels of collaborative learning tended to be more satisfied with their distance course than those who perceived low levels of collaborative learning. Similarly, students with high perceptions of collaborative learning perceived high levels of social presence as well. Surprisingly, the relationship between social presence and overall satisfaction was positive but not statistically significant. Interview data revealed that (a) course structure, (b) emotional support, and (c) communication medium were critical factors associated with student perceptions of collaborative learning, social presence, and satisfaction. Explanations about findings and implications for instructional design are discussed in the conclusion.     

The effectiveness of using procedural scaffoldings in a paper-plus-smartphone collaborative learning context

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using procedural scaffoldings in fostering students’ group discourse levels and learning outcomes in a paper-plus-smartphone collaborative learning context. All participants used built-in camera smartphones to learn new knowledge by scanning Quick Response (QR) codes, a type of two-dimensional barcode, embedded in paper-based learning materials in this study. Sixty undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at a four-year university in southern Taiwan participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned into two different groups, using procedural scaffoldings learning and non-procedural scaffoldings learning. The learning unit about the Long Tail, an important concept used in products sales, was the learning task that participants were expected to complete. During the experiment, pretest–posttest and the completed group worksheets were used to collect data. The researchers applied content analyses, chi-square test, t-test, and ANCOVA to answer research questions. The findings indicated that participants in the experimental group using procedural scaffoldings achieved better learning outcomes than their counterparts in the control group in terms of group discourse levels, group learning, and individual learning.     

Applying adaptive swarm intelligence technology with structuration in web-based collaborative learning

One of the key challenges in the promotion of web-based learning is the development of effective collaborative learning environments. We posit that the structuration process strongly influences the effectiveness of technology used in web-based collaborative learning activities. In this paper, we propose an ant swarm collaborative learning (ASCL) environment based on a swarm intelligence system (SIS) that structures opportunities for effective collaboration and learning in a dynamic way. The results of our experiments indicate that: (1) the self-organizing behavior of SIS is positively associated with system appropriation; (2) the multi-agent-based mechanism of SIS is positively associated with system appropriation; (3) the cohesive capability of SIS is positively associated with system appropriation; and (4) the learner’s tendency toward system appropriation is positively associated with learning effectiveness. Our findings also show that learners in an ASCL environment outperform their counterparts in a general web-based learning (GWL) environment. We conclude that different types of technological support can influence the achievement in a web-based learning environment.     

The roles of group potency and information and communication technologies in the relationship between task conflict and team effectiveness: A longitudinal study

The effects of task conflict on group effectiveness are far from conclusive. In order to further clarify this relationship, a contingency approach has been suggested. In this context, the present study examines the roles of group potency and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the relationship between task conflict and team effectiveness. The study involved 44 groups of 4 members each, working in two communication media. Twenty-two groups worked in a face-to-face condition, and the other 22 groups worked in a computer-mediated communication condition. The groups developed a project during four weekly sessions over a one-month period. The results showed that group potency moderated the relationship between task conflict and group effectiveness. However, the communication medium did not play a moderator role in these relationships.     

Analyzing collaborative learning processes automatically: Exploiting the advances of computational linguistics in computer-supported collaborative learning

In this article we describe the emerging area of text classification research focused on the problem of collaborative learning process analysis both from a broad perspective and more specifically in terms of a publicly available tool set called TagHelper tools. Analyzing the variety of pedagogically valuable facets of learners’ interactions is a time consuming and effortful process. Improving automated analyses of such highly valued processes of collaborative learning by adapting and applying recent text classification technologies would make it a less arduous task to obtain insights from corpus data. This endeavor also holds the potential for enabling substantially improved on-line instruction both by providing teachers and facilitators with reports about the groups they are moderating and by triggering context sensitive collaborative learning support on an as-needed basis. In this article, we report on an interdisciplinary research project, which has been investigating the effectiveness of applying text classification technology to a large CSCL corpus that has been analyzed by human coders using a theory-based multi-dimensional coding scheme. We report promising results and include an in-depth discussion of important issues such as reliability, validity, and efficiency that should be considered when deciding on the appropriateness of adopting a new technology such as TagHelper tools. One major technical contribution of this work is a demonstration that an important piece of the work towards making text classification technology effective for this purpose is designing and building linguistic pattern detectors, otherwise known as features, that can be extracted reliably from texts and that have high predictive power for the categories of discourse actions that the CSCL community is interested in.

The learning kit project: Software tools for supporting and researching regulation of collaborative learning

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a dynamic and varied area of research. Ideally, tools for CSCL support and encourage solo and group learning processes and products. However, most CSCL research does not focus on supporting and sustaining the co-construction of knowledge. We identify four reasons for this situation and identify three critical resources every collaborator brings to collaborations that are underutilized in CSCL research: (a) prior knowledge, (b) information not yet transformed into knowledge that is judged relevant to the task(s) addressed in collaboration, and (c) cognitive processes used to construct these informational resources. Finally, we introduce gStudy, a software tool designed to advance research in the learning sciences. gStudy helps learners manage cognitive load so they can re-assign cognitive resources to self-, co-, and shared regulation; and it automatically and unobtrusively traces each user′s engagement with content and the means chosen for cognitively processing content, thus generating real-time performance data about processes of collaborative learning.     

Perceptions of learning effectiveness in M‐learning: scale development and student awareness

The purpose of this study is to develop a multi‐dimensional scale to measure students' awareness of key competencies for M‐learning and to test its reliability and validity. The Key Competencies of Mobile Learning Scale (KCMLS) was determined via confirmatory factor analysis to have four dimensions: team collaboration, creative thinking, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication. The research subjects are 815 students from the elementary school that participate in M‐learning programme in Taiwan. The research results show that students have better self‐awareness in team collaboration and creative thinking, but have worse self‐awareness in critical thinking and problem solving. This study also found that there was no significant difference between genders in the KCMLS, but students who study in the schools that committed in M‐learning longer have higher awareness in all dimensions than students who study in the schools that committed to M‐learning in fewer years.     

Superiority of collaborative learning with complex tasks: A research note on an alternative affective explanation

Kirschner, Paas, and Kirschner (2009c) used the theoretical framework of cognitive load to explain why the learning of a group of collaborating individuals was more efficient than that of individuals learning alone with high-complexity tasks but not with low-complexity tasks. The authors argued that collaboration circumvented the limitations of an individual’s working memory by creating an expanded cognitive capacity and by allowing for the distribution of cognitive load among group members. Inspired by research on efficacy, this study explored an alternative affective explanation of the results. By measuring the amount of mental effort learners expected to invest in working on a learning task before actually carrying out the task, this study showed that learners who had to collaboratively solve a high-complexity problem expected to invest less mental effort than learners who had to solve the problem alone. When confronted with low-complexity tasks, the expected amount of mental effort did not differ.     

Bridging the gap between students and computers: supporting activity awareness for network collaborative learning with GSM network

The internet has been widely used to promote collaborative learning among students. However, students do not always have access to the system, leading to doubt in the interaction among the students, and reducing the effectiveness of collaborative learning, since the web-based collaborative learning environment relies entirely on the availability of computers and the internet. A web-based collaborative learning scheme based on activity awareness carried out through mobile phones is proposed herein. The proposed mechanism automatically sends SMS messages on a GSM network, based on student identity and learning activity, making the student aware of the collaborative learning context, and further improving the student's learning. A web-based collaborative learning activity was implemented in a Taiwan undergraduate class to examine the proposed scheme. Experiments demonstrated that awareness of the collaborative learning context through mobile phones significantly increased student participation in learning activity and improving student learning performance.     

Mutual awareness in collaborative design: An Augmented Reality integrated telepresence system

Remote collaboration has become increasingly important and common in designers’ working routine. It is critical for geographically distributed designers to accurately perceive and comprehend other remote team members’ intentions and activities with a high level of awareness and presence as if they were working in the same room. More specifically, distributed cognition places emphasis on the social aspects of cognition and asserts that knowledge is distributed by placing memories, facts, or knowledge on objects, individuals, and tools in the environment they work. This paper proposes a new computer-mediated remote collaborative design system, TeleAR, to enhance the distributed cognition among remote designers by integrating Augmented Reality and telepresence technologies. This system can afford a high level externalization of shared resources, which includes gestures, design tools, design elements, and design materials. This paper further investigates how this system may affect designers’ communication and collaboration with focus on distributed cognition and mutual awareness. It also explores the critical communication-related issue addressed in the proposed system, including common ground and social capitals, perspective invariance, trust and spatial faithfulness.     

Computer-supported collaborative learning with digital video cases in teacher education: The impact of teaching experience on knowledge convergence

Case-based learning is ascribed high potential with respect to the education of pre-service teachers as well as the further education of experienced in-service teachers, as it can provide opportunities for the application of professional knowledge to authentic classroom situations. In addition to the application and acquisition of knowledge, the aspect of knowledge convergence (i.e., increasing similarity of collaborative learners with respect to their knowledge) should be taken into account when homogeneous benefits are desired for all participants of a case-based training. A field study with 29 pre-service teachers and 24 in-service teachers from adult education was conducted to examine effects of different levels of teaching experience on knowledge application, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge convergence in a computer-supported collaborative case-based learning environment. An innovative approach to measuring knowledge convergence was introduced, using the positions of annotations (i.e., flags placed on the timeline of the case video) made by learners during their case analyses as an indicator of their shared focus of attention. This measure was found to positively correlate with the application and acquisition of professional knowledge. Teaching experience affected both processes and outcomes of case-based learning, suggesting different means of instructional support for pre-service and in-service teachers.