ACTWAN - Aligning Collaboration Tools With Academic Needs

Interpretations

1. Face-to-Face Collaboration is Highly Valued.

A majority of faculty respondents to our survey agree that collaboration is essential to learning. It is unsurprising then to see that 73% of faculty members surveyed asked their students to engage each other in some kind of collaborative activities. Our research shows that both faculty and students find significant value in face-to-face collaboration.

Although additional similar comments by both students and faculty indicate a preference for collaborating face-to-face, the survey does indicate that they are open to learning and exploring how online tools can assist in collaboration.

2. There is disagreement about the value of certain face-to-face activities.

Interestingly, there seems to be disagreement about the value of certain face-to-face collaborative activities. While discussions, study groups, group problem solving, and peer editing are all seen as valuable to both students and faculty, the students find more value in the use of study groups than faculty (20% variance) and faculty value group presentations more than students (12% variance). While further research with focus groups would have been useful to investigate these discrepancies, we do have some ideas as to why this is: Study groups are organized by the students themselves, often at the point of greatest need, such as just before an exam. This allows participants the opportunity to discuss difficult questions and topics that are specific to their understanding of the material. From a student perspective, study groups can be an informal, yet effective way to improve one's knowledge and grade.

Instructors assign group presentations because they feel it represents good practice for real-world collaboration. Students are less enthusiastic about group presentations because of the potential that unproductive participants will piggyback on the work of the more industrious members of the group. In these instances, the assessment model and therefore the final presentation grade may not recognize the unequal distribution of work.

3. Online Collaboration Activities Are Not Valued Highly by Instructors.

Fewer than half of the instructors surveyed feel that collaborating online makes it easier for students to complete assignments and even fewer feel that student learning is aided when collaborating online (synchronously or asynchronously). With this kind of perception about the online activities, similar attitudes towards the tools are not surprising.

4. Use of Online Collaborative Tools is Limited.

While face-to-face collaborative activities are seen as important and are assigned to students, the majority of instructors do not incorporate online tools to supplement and support collaboration. 57% of our faculty do not assign the listed technologies to students for working collaboratively. Though low, discussion forums was the technology that faculty members were most likely to assign. We attribute this to discussion boards' maturity and availability along with the faculty’s familiarity with the tool.  Interestingly, the students said in the survey comments that e-mail was a collaborative tool that they used quite a bit. We purposely omitted e-mail as a tool from both faculty and student surveys because we felt that the service was ubiquitous and therefore little could be recommended on it. In fact, e-mail may play a more important role as a model for collaborative tools as we will explain in our conclusion.

5. Lack of Knowledge About Online Collaborative Activities and Tools is a Barrier.

There are many comments, in the open-ended questions, on the need to understand a particular technology - how it works, how to control it, and how it could be used to enhance learning -- before implementing it. Faculty members are also concerned with the time it takes them and their students to learn a new tool and are generally unwilling to test tools for fear of looking foolish. A majority of students and faculty indicated they want tools to be easy, intuitive, and proven before introducing it into their curriculum. With the lack of knowledge about online collaborative activities and tools, it is not surprising that the use of online collaborative tools is limited or that online collaboration activities are not valued highly by instructors.

5. Security Issues are Important -- More So for Faculty.

Students and faculty alike want access control over who can and cannot see and interact with their online coursework. In addition to protecting their own work and identities online, faculty are just as concerned with protecting the work and identities of their students. Such protective measures and concerns are imperative in a climate where students can and do -- knowingly or not -- publish personal information online. The ACTWAN committee feels that this student behavior, it's implications for instructors as owners of the course, and the lack of knowledge about collaborative tools in general contributes to faculty reluctance in assigning online tools for collaboration.

Yet, based on campus consulting efforts, both students and faculty want the capability to collaborate with people outside of the University community, or to display the results of collaborative efforts to the online world. In the end, there will likely be an expectation of granular access control.

Conclusion

Faculty and students want to be able to collaborate in familiar ways. This is why face-to-face activities are preferred over online activities and why discussion forums and e-mail are two of the more familiar tools for collaboration and receive more attention than any other technologies for collaborating. As one member of our committee put it, faculty and students want a tool that is "e-mail easy." But what does this mean?

E-mail and discussion forums were not simple tools right out of the box--faculty and students required experience and education to become comfortable using them for coursework. Similar time for education, testing and experimentation with emerging collaborative tools is a necessary stepping stone for future integration. The above quote is illuminating in this respect. While we are sympathetic to the frustrations that many instructors feel over the changing technology landscape, email and websites were new technologies for this person at some point. Over time and by learning more about these technologies, the faculty member being quoted may choose to incorporate these tools into his/her instruction.

The more that instructors hear about and become informed on new technologies, the greater the likelihood that they'll consider using it as part of the course. For example, wikis have a popular and persistent buzz thanks to public implementations such as Wikipedia, local experimentation and use of the tool, and multiple campus discussions about their value. Despite the lack of a campus-wide service, 43% of faculty surveyed felt that wikis are something that they would consider implementing in the future and 10 out of 34 faculty respondents referenced wikis in an open-ended question.

It is clear that any campus-supported collaborative tool requires an educational service approach designed toward, building familiarity - the ease of use of the tool, evidence of its effectiveness in instruction, and its ability to be a safe application for student and faculty collaboration.

As we move forward in support of collaboration, students and faculty warn us not to ignore the value of face-to-face collaboration. The results encourage services to enhance face-to-face and online collaboration with a blended approach.