Collaboration in Educational Settings Nathan Campbell Lisa Doan Kirill Kireyev Malte Winkler

Why Collaboration? –Teaches valuable “people” skills –Self-empowerment, responsibility, self-expression –“When you teach, you learn” –Synergy of ideas, “symmetry of ignorance” –Cognitive Dissonance Theory – resolving disagreements Why Computer-aided Collaboration? –Helps mediate opinions (everyone is heard) –Easy to organize/visualize information –Distributed Space / Time / People –Fun

Interviews & Observations People: –Gerhard Fischer / Hal Eden (Swiki) –Sebastian De La Chica (UI design) –Michael Main (WebCT) –Carl Wieman (Clickers) –Amer Diwan Technologies: –WebCT –EDC –FEEL (DLC ’04) –Swiki –Moodle –Clickers

Interviews & Observations Issues –Structured vs. unstructured –Whiteboard vs. message board –In class vs. online discussions Generalizations –“Beaten Path” –“Cycle of Abandonment”

Cycle of Abandonment

Different Modes of Collaboration

Design Questions Balance online vs. face-to-face –How to integrate? Structured (WebCT) vs Unstructured (wiki) –Freedom may be messy General vs. specific Mediation? Support flexibility, evolution –Users will use in different ways

Lessons Learned from IR Technological artifacts must be accompanied by understanding and willingness to change underlying social practices Collaboration requires proper environment –Open-ended projects –Shared goals –Non-competitive environment Collaborative skills need to be taught

Project Enhancing Collaboration Among Students In Large Lecture Settings

Large Lectures: Challenges Students often have questions, but hesitate to ask –Don’t want to interrupt lecture –Shy / self-conscious Lecturer’s attention is limited Difficult to gauge level of student understanding, interest Difficult to remember discourse, reasoning, opinions

Large Lectures: Opportunities Peers represent large body of knowledge and opinions –Improve deliberation process TAs available to answer questions –As long as not intrusive to the lecture Clickers work well, but would be nice to: –Add justification –Persist answers (in context) for later review Student want to ask questions –Gain confidence to know they’re not alone

Proposed Solution: SLE

Notes and Question Markers

As the Question Marks Increase the Class Confusion Histogram gives the students, TAs, and the professor a class status

Students have the ability to ask questions that get sent out to all students and TAs that they can discuss and look at the answer provided by each other or the TA. They also have the ability of increase the questions need to be answered

We also have “clicker” capability, but require justifications for every answer.

Random Justifications are displayed. The students are able to discuss the questions with each other by simply clicking the discuss button