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

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

3. New users adopt a tool to help complete a task. Frustration over usability and functionality. Lack of other users and support adds to frustration. Abandonment due to frustration Cycle of Abandonment

4. Different Modes of Collaboration

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

6. Lessons Learned 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

7. Project Enhancing Collaboration Among Students In Large Lecture Settings

8. 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

9. 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

10. Proposed Solution: SLE

11. Notes and Question Markers

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

13. 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

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

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