Designing Activities for Online Collaboration

Mark Childs

Gilly Salmon’s 5 stage model

Preliminary Stages•Access. Need to logon, to find the right place, and know how to take part. IT induction should be through taking part in interesting e-tivitities, clarify purpose of activity.

•Socialisation – helping people to develop their online identities as individuals and groups e.g. sharing hopes and expectations, establishing group norms, exposing, exploring and explaining differences.

Subject-specific stages•Information exchange – e-tivities to promote interaction and engagement. Need clear structures, pacing and expectations as messages get more frequent.

•Knowledge construction – becoming online authors. Moderators role might be to weave, to keep it on track, to introduce new theories and know when to close the e-tivity.

•Development – participants concerned with planning their own continuing development and learning.

Supporting online interaction

Case study•1st cycle Structural engineering (Coventry), architecture (Ryerson)

•2nd cycle added Loughborough (engineering project management)

•Online collaboration for design

Ryerson to Coventry

Transactional Distance/ I O model

Soetanto, R., Childs, M., Poh, P., Austin, S. and Hao, J. (2012) Global multidisciplinary learning in construction education: Lessons from virtual collaboration of building design teams. Civil Engineering Dimension, 14(3), 173-181. ISSN 1410-9530 print / ISSN 1979-570X online

Soetanto, R., Childs, M., Poh, P., Austin, S. and Hao, J. (2014) Virtual collaborative learning for building design. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Management, Procurement and Law, 167, MP1, 25-34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/mpal.13.00002

Professional ethosCompletion of tasks to timeGreater trustReliance on other alignments diminishesGreater co-operation

Lack of professional ethosFailure to complete tasks to timeDiminishing trustGreater reliance on other alignmentsReduced commitment to collaboration

Trust and social interaction

Only difference was when trust broke down, online found it difficult to re-establish it.Rourke et al, 1999 gives examples of studies in establishing trust in online interactions:

•27% of the total message content consisted of expressions of feeling, self introductions, jokes, compliments, greetings, and closures.

• the more one discloses personal information, the more others will reciprocate, and the more individuals know about each other the more likely they are to establish trust, seek support, and thus find satisfaction

Use of technology in collaboration

Students showed high degrees of digital literacy•Selecting specific platforms to achieve specific tasks•Moving fluidly between them to achieve the desired results.

•For quick communication all of the students used Facebook

•used Dropbox for sharing documents. •All used GoToMeeting.

M16BE – Cont Issues & Res Methodology

Technologies for different modes

Technologies need to be able to:–Transfer a lot of information from one person to the others. conveyance. Has to be the one all people access frequently

–Be able to bring separate ideas together convergence. Has to be synchronous.

–A single location for storing and updating all materials “coherence”. DropBox. Googledocs.

Lack of socialising online

•Opinion held by about half the students in the class was “SCREENS ARE NOT ENGAGING” and “I still believe face to face meetings are key to success”

Yet:•No small talk in GoToMeetings.•No sharing of images.•Maintaining a professional distance.

Lessons learnt by students (we thought were self-evident)

•Not breaking off for private conversations. •Effectively supplementing face-to-face behaviours to compensate for less physical presence.

•Chairing meetings formally so that only one person speaks at the same time and everyone gets a chance to contribute.

•Planning and structuring meetings. •Ensuring everyone is included. •Eliminating echo. •Taking into account students with disabilities.•Don’t work in unsuitable areas.

Conclusion• Online collaboration effective for learning• But needs an online social aspect to maintain

trust and facilitate communication• Students tend to pursue online social

relationships only with people they know offline. Solely online connections need scaffolding.

• Therefore despite learners’ digital literacies, social activity does not spontaneously occur

• Need to devise specific activities to facilitate.

Centre for Education Innovationhttp://www.cardiff.ac.uk/innovation/learning-teaching

• Curriculum design and learning technology support• Learning Technology Officers are based in each College and on hand to

help:–deliver workshops, drop-ins and training sessions for academics and

administrators–understand how technologies can support or enhance a particular practice–collaborate across the University through Community of Practice events–explore and utilise learning technologies which meet their needs and the needs

of our students–design and deliver free online courses

• innovationsystem@cardiff.ac.uk• Centre for Education Innovation Learning Technologists ceilt@cardiff.ac.uk.