ACTWAN - Aligning Collaboration Tools With Academic Needs

Summary V.2 July 17, 2007

UW-Madison, Division of Information Technology (DoIT), 2007.

The ACTWAN study looked at the value of collaborative activities, the current use of collaborative technologies and the need for various collaborative technologies on the UW-Madison campus.

ACTWAN working definition of collaboration:

"Collaboration gives people the opportunity to communicate, to collectively author, edit and review materials and to develop a community of learners who are working toward a shared outcome. To this end, there are many collaborative activities such as peer review, sharing experiences, and lab work which can enable this process."

Collaborative tools and activities @ UW Madison: Some key findings

• Instructors and students both reported that the most valuable collaborative activities occur face-to-face.
• 90% of instructors feel student learning is aided when collaborating face-to-face, while only 41% of instructors believe that student learning is aided by online collaboration.
• There exists a lack of knowledge of collaborative technologies, (what are they, how they work and how they can be used), which represents a significant barrier to use.
• Despite the findings above, 79% of faculty would consider integrating various collaborative tools into future courses.
• As a way to support student learning, students value study groups more than faculty and faculty value group presentations more than students.

What do we do with this information? (Recommendations)

While our work suggests that a majority of instructors are willing to consider the use of online collaborative technologies in their courses and despite our intent to put physical spaces outside of this study’s scope, the importance of face-to-face collaboration cannot be ignored.

Due to the disparate values placed by students and faculty on certain face-to-face collaborative activities, we recommend further study of what is working in face-to-face environments. Closer analysis would be an effective approach for understanding of the needed features for effective online collaboration and developing strategies that enhance and extend existing collaborative activities in instruction.

We recommend raising awareness of emerging technologies to bring them into the mainstream, as this will increase instructors' understanding and adoption. This could be achieved through existing mechanisms such as Engage grants, a ComETS SIG (Special Interest Group) with a direct plan for multiple ways of communication with faculty, the efforts of Campus Communicators, or by visible and easy-to-access case studies and a place for faculty to experiment with collaborative technologies.

We recommend an annual review of IT needs should be conducted by the entity managing the service. Ideally the review might be handed off to another entity - perhaps included on the DoIT IT Survey or addressed by a ComETS SIG. For the 1-3 year timeframe, the steps above should be used to refine and adapt the collaborative tools service. At best, any future service should continually offer a toolbox of the most used collaborative applications, incorporating an interface that integrates pedagogy and discipline-specific customizations.