Collaborative Learning Tool for Presenting Authentic Case Studies and its Impact on Student Participation

Abstract

Advancement in information and communication technologies has brought about the development of newer tools that can promote collaborative learning. Conversant Media is a tool that allows users to engage in collaborative discussion based on viewing authentic video footages. This article reports the impact of the use of the tool on collaborative learning in a teacher education course. The trainee teachers engaged themselves enthusiastically in this exercise going beyond the minimum number of postings expected of them. Both the quantity and quality of interaction improved over the three activities they were engaged in. Writing critical comments on classroom events and reading feedback from peers were highly valued by the trainee teachers. Conversant Media has the potential for use in teacher education as an alternative means to classroom visits.

Interaction in Asynchronous Web- Based Learning Environments: Strategies Supported by Educational Research

“…Research Supported Strategies Bannan-Ritland, Bragg, and Collins [51] Encouraging reflection Making a community of practitioners Applying project-based learning Levin and Waugh [57] Question answering and question asking Collaborating Student publishing Web weaving Project generating and coordinating Lourdusamy, Khine, and Sipusic [58] Using authentic cases McIsaac, Blocher, Mahes, and Vrasidas [59] Providing immediate feedback Encouraging the discussion Assigning pairs for moderating online discussion Using collaborative learning strategies (group project, group debate) Northrup [22,60] Using innovative strategies including case studies, debates, role plays, and gaming. Requiring timely responses from peers and from instructor Providing an opportunity to self-monitor learners' own progress Rossman [61] Posting a weekly summary of the online discussion Monitoring the quality and regularity of learner postings Vrasidas and McIsaac [27] Training students to use emoticons, to use the conferencing system, and to employ appropriate etiquette Assigning student pairs with a mixed range of skills Through an in-depth literature review study, Bannan-Ritland et al, [51] provided a framework that integrates educational constructs (e.g., reflective components, social components and content components) with learning principles and instructional activities to identify effective instructional strategies for Web-based courses.…”

“…Lourdusamy, Khine, and Sipusic [58] explored the impact of a tool that allows users to engage in collaborative discussion based on viewing authentic video footage (e.g., classroom teaching episodes) in teacher education. By rating students' participation and the quality of their comments, the authors concluded that using authentic cases increases the quality and quantity of interaction in online learning situations.…”

“…Brown et al [77] describe authentic activities as "ordinary practices of the culture" (p. 34), and Newmann and Wehlage [81] describe authentic activities as real world tasks that a person can expect to encounter in everyday life. Studies have shown that the structure of authentic activities in WBLEs can increase the quality of online interaction [9,18,58,79]. Because authentic activities mirror real world tasks, they require students to cooperate, to communicate, to respect each other's views, and to use diverse skills to complete the task successfully [82].…”

Supporting CSCW and CSCL with Intelligent Social Grouping Services

“…A CSCL-oriented software system is usually called a Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE). Some existing CLE examples are: Conversant Media (Lourdusamy et al, 2003), COMTELLA (Vassileva, 2004), EDUCOSM (Miettinen et al, 2003), EDUTELLA (Nejdl et al, 2002), Groove (Eikemeier, Lechner, 2004), and SpeakEasy (Edwards et al, 2002). Bravo and others (Bravo et al, 2006) build a learner-centered synchronous CSCL environment for students to study design.…”

“…For example, Avouris and others (Avouris et al, 2004) design an environment for monitoring and examining group learning patterns from two aspects -activity analysis and collaboration analysis. Some other researchers focus on building powerful P2P learning environments such as Conversant Media (Lourdusamy et al, 2003) and metacognition (Dimitracopoulou, Petrou, 2005).…”