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IEEE CCC Code: 978-1-4244-6019-9/09/$26.00 ©2009 IEEE

Abstract- Graduate business schools teach subjects that centre around students developing processing skills. Processing skills are combinations of analytical, creative, and practical abilities and are instrumental in achieving success.

Collaborative learning facilitates learning skills that would generally fall in the realms of processing skills. However, collaborative learning presents issues in creating collaborative projects, administering, enabling and encouraging students to participate, monitoring and assessing the process and the outcomes.

This paper discusses various mechanisms available within computer mediated modern Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and examines their use in facilitating collaborative learning in classrooms. It presents anecdotal results of an experiment sans scientific methodologies carried out at a graduate business school in India over a span of two years.

Index Terms—Collaborative learning, issues in collaborative learning, computer mediated learning, role of learning management systems.

I. INTRODUCTION ollaborative learning is an effective tool of learning [1]. This is more so in the context of business disciplines as learning in business schools involves inter alia, creative

thinking, comprehension of abstract ideas and developing analytical abilities. Sternberg calls these skills collectively Processing Skills [2].

Collaborative learning is an effective way for learning processing skills. Anuradha A. Gokhale finds that “…collaborative learning fosters the development of critical thinking through discussion, clarification of ideas and evaluation of other ideas” [3].

Teaching and learning processing skills in classrooms require certain approaches as described by Stanberg and Grogorenko in Successful Intelligence in the Classroom [4].

This paper focuses on the use of computer mediated learning management systems (LMSs) in facilitating collaborative learning and presents anecdotal results of LMS based collaborative learning in a graduate business school in

India, with specific reference to the open source LMS, Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle).

1 Manuscript received August 13, 2009. Agam Nag is a professor with the Institute of Management Technology, Nagpur, India, (phone: +91-712-280-5130; fax: +91-712-280-5130; e-mail: anag@ imtnag.ac.in).

II. PEDAGOGY IN BUSINESS SCHOOLS

A. Pedagogy in Business Schools: Business schools use a variety of teaching methodologies

such as lectures, group projects, case discussions, presentations by students and seminars, among others. The importance of collaborative learning is recognized widely and the activities that involve groups of students are common in business schools.

B. Collaborative Learning: Collaborative learning could take place at two levels; class

level and group level. Collaborative projects may be designed where the entire class participates or they may be designed for groups of students say, each consisting of 4-8 students. The same set of tools may be used to design and administer collaborative projects in both cases. This paper focuses on collaborative learning at group level.

III. ISSUES IN COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Collaborative learning while being an effective and valuable

tool comes with certain issues.

A. Ensuring Active Participation: It is not an uncommon experience to find that in a group

tasked with a project to be completed in a collaborative learning environment; one or two students carry the burden while the rest contribute little. Monitoring the individual contributions in a group projects is notoriously difficult. Uneven participation and contribution defeat the objectives of collaborative learning.

B. Evolution of Ideas: Collaborative learning assumes that the ideas or solution

emerge and mature through discussions and refinements. Facilitating and ensuring this process with appropriate transparency is a challenge for teachers with the result that the project might not have had time to evolve and mature and might not have gone through the rigors of evolving a set of solutions through iterative refinement.

Computer Mediated Collaborative Learning

Agam Nag1

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C. Assessment: Assessment in a collaborative learning environment can be

done at several levels. The assessment should address the outcome of the of group projects, the process of reaching the

outcome by students, contribution of the group as a whole and the contribution of individuals.

The nature of group projects makes assessment difficult especially, when it comes to assessing the process of reaching the outcome by students and the contributions by individuals.

IV. COMPUTER MEDIATED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

An LMS can help create, administer, monitor and assess a

collaborative learning project while addressing the issues involved in collaborative learning to a certain extent.

An effective collaborative learning process will have the following elements: • Teacher and students collaboratively build an extended list

of projects around a set of ideas.

• A short-list consisting of a requisite number of projects is culled from the extended list.

• Students choose the project they want to work on and this becomes the basis for group formation. Alternatively, students may form groups and then choose projects from the short-list.

• Each group is assigned a different project, unless comparative assessment of performance of various groups is an objective.

• The students suggest, discuss and evolve solutions through successive refinements.

• A set of final solutions emerges through the iterative process of suggestion, discussion and refinement.

• All students actively participate in the process with comparable contribution at various stages of the process of arriving at a set of solutions.

• Teacher motivates, facilitates and intervenes as necessary.

• Teacher accesses information to assess the performance of the group as well as those of individual group members. Teacher also assess the process of collaborative learning.es.

With this context, this paper presents the factors enabling collaborative learning by LMSs with specific reference to Moodle. All keywords in bold italics refer to modules in Moodle.

V. USING AN LMS IN COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

A. Selection and Assignment of Projects:

• Selection of Projects An extended list is compiled by creating a class level Wiki.

All students and the teacher add their preferred project topics till the list reflects sufficiently comprehensive coverage of the set of ideas the projects are to cover. The final list of project is culled by creating and administering a Choice. The Choice presents the extended list of projects to the students. Students vote for the project topics and a list of culled projects emerges through popular votes.

• Assignment of Projects to Groups: Students may again use Choice to form groups and to

choose projects for groups. The LMS provides facilities to form groups by students and choose projects. Alternatively, teacher may assign projects to groups.

B. Developing Solutions through the Process of Suggestions, Discussions and Refinement:

• The students use Forum or Chat to suggest and discuss the solutions. The outcomes of various stages of discussions and refinements are recorded in group Wikis accessible to the group members. Group Wikis maintain a record of successive refinements by way of maintaining edit versions.

• A set of final solutions that emerges through the iterative process of suggestion, discussion and refinement may be presented in several ways; through the group Wiki, presented as an answer to a submission to an Assignment or entered into the Database. (Assignment is a module that allows teacher to post assignments for students and posting of submissions by students. Teacher assess the submissions using one of the several ways provided by the LMS. Database is like any other database. It resides within the LMS and allows typical database functions to teachers and students).

C. Enabling The Collaborative Learning Process And Encouraging The Students:

The teacher acts as an enabling agent by intervening at appropriate times by being a part of the discussion Forum, Chat or Wiki. The teacher exercises judgment as to the extent and depth of intervention.

D. Monitoring of Collaborative Learning Process by Teacher:

• All students should actively participate at various stages of the process of collaborative learning.

• Teacher accesses information to monitor the participation of the group members. This is done by monitoring the individual participation in the group Forum and the group Wiki. Teacher may use the information to encourage students with low levels of participation.

E. Assessment of Individual and the Group Performance: In a computer mediated environment, the collaborative projects may be assessed in a variety of ways:

• Self Assessment. • Peer Assessment (excluding self). • Teacher Assessment. • Combination of two or more Methods of Assessment.

Following are the ways teacher may use to assess the collaborative projects:

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• Grading of the Collaborative Project at Various Stages: Grading of the collaborative projects at various stages viz.,

generation and compilation of projects ideas, the iterative development of solutions and the final presentation of solutions may be done using the grading mechanisms available within LMSs.

Wiki is used for the generation, compilation and refinement of ideas. Although, Wiki shows the contribution made by group members and the group outcome, Wiki does not allow grading within itself (Wiki). A number of other means are available to grade the individual and group contribution. Whereas Assignment may be used easily and effectively other activities that allow grading may also be used. Wiki pages remain available as inputs to modules that allow various ways of grading.

• Peer Assessment: Peer assessment of collaborative projects is an important

tool of learning. Gueldenzoph and May state “…one of the instructional hazards of group projects is evaluation. How should students be assessed for their participation in group projects? One potentially effective method is peer evaluation” [5].

“Keith Topping describes effective approaches to peer assessment and encourages teachers to incorporate them into their practice [6].

Peer assessment presents the issue of anonymity, presenting the material to peers for assessment and collecting the results of assessment. Further, the scores may be processed to arrive at the final score. LMSs excel in addressing these issues.

For peer assessment of collaborative work, The LMS offers Workshop module, where the work (Wiki or any submission made by students) is assessed by peers as well as the teacher. Workshop has mechanisms to discourage casual peer assessment by using a system of penalty. This is an important facility. As the penalty for casual peer assessment is algorithmic and compute intensive, it is practicable only in a computer mediated collaborative learning environment.

Workshop consolidates self assessment, peer assessment and teacher assessment and presents a table of scores. It uses algorithms for consolidating and presenting the scores. Certain parameters of the algorithms may be defined by the teacher.

• Assessing the Process: The process of collaborative learning itself may be

evaluated using various facilities in LMSs such as gradual development of Wiki pages, interaction among students on Forum, collection of materials on the course database and course pages among others. LMSs make it practicable to carry out such evaluation.

F. Enabling, Feedback and Encouragement: The facilities that the process of collaborative learning use,

allow teacher and students to convey feedback with little

restrictions. Teachers use various channels to enable and encourage students.

VI. A CASUAL STUDY OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN LMS IN COLLABORATIVE LEARNING AT A BUSINESS SCHOOL

A. Collaborative Learning within Conventional Pedagogical Framework.

In a conventional learning environment, within the existing framework, an experiment was conducted sans scientific methodologies with the purpose of generating anecdotal results with data where feasible. The experiment included:

• Designing appropriate collaborative projects that required creative thinking, validation of ideas by group members, adopting and developing the lead idea(s) and applying them to target situations.

• Complementing classroom teaching with collaborative projects

• Providing computer assisted infrastructure by way of an LMS (Moodle) to facilitate the collaborative process, enforcing and encouraging, and monitoring and assessing collaborative learning.

Collaborative learning was practiced in 4 courses and 2 subjects in 4 semesters over a period of 2 years in a graduate business school in India. One of the courses was IT strategy related whereas the other was primarily focused on the strategies and process for the marketing of hi-tech services.

The courses involved materials that required processing skills (creative thinking, comprehension of abstract ideas and developing analytical abilities).

Class sizes varied from 38 to 48, divided into groups of 3-5 students. Classes were conducted in computer labs where students used lab desktops as well as in lecture theatres where students used their own laptops. Administration of collaborative projects was entirely done through LMS.

Students followed the steps generally recommended for collaborative learning.

They formed their own groups and signed up for projects using the LMS, within the guidelines laid down by the teacher.

Discussions, communication, submissions, monitoring, feedback and assessments were done through various mechanisms provided by the LMS and at times in conjunction with extensions provided by third parties. Peer assessment was used as a component of assessment for collaborative projects. Students were incentivized to participate in peer assessment. Two different ways of peer assessment were used. One was algorithmic that penalized peers based on distance from the teacher defined ‘ideal’ assessment and computed composite scores taking certain evaluation components as inputs. The other method was simple with no penalty for inaccuracy in peer assessment.

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In addition to the teacher’s assessment of the effectiveness of the collaborative learning and the LMS as the infrastructure, students were directly asked to assess the effectiveness of collaborative learning as well as that of the LMS. Student feedback was collected several times through the semester.

VII. ANECDOTAL RESULTS

Anecdotal results and the survey data suggest that students

were positively disposed to collaborative learning. Survey data suggested that students preferred collaborative projects to other modes of pedagogy.

Students did not indicate preference to the assessment process used in collaborative leaning over the conventional instruments such as quizzes. The two methods of assessments were rated about same.

The survey data indicated that the students recognized the role of LMS in facilitating the collaborative learning. The data further indicated that the LMS was seen as a key enabler at various stages of collaborative learning.

The teacher experienced ease in administering various stages of collaborative projects and enhanced accuracy in assessment of group and individual performance, though significant gaps remain between the actual and the accuracy levels desired in an ideal environment.

The LMS brought transparency to the process and thus created a mandate for students to participate.

VIII. FUTURE AREAS OF RESEARCH

The future areas of research may concentrate on validating the perceived benefits of computer mediated collaborative learning in business schools scientifically. Another important area of research is the process and parameters of evaluation of student performance in a collaborative learning environment. This may result in to specific recommendations for enhancements to the LMSs in use currently as well as for new developments in LMSs geared to facilitate collaborative learning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author thanks Prof. V. Ekkirala, Associate Professor,

OB&HR, Institute of Management Technology, Nagpur, India, for facilitating discussion on Triarchic Theory of Intelligence and Successful Intelligence.

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