Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 54, Issue 4, May 2010, Pages 1137-1144
Computers & Education

Do students need teacher’s initiation in online collaborative learning?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2009.10.021Get rights and content

Abstract

As more and more people use computers to complete their work and solve problems in the workplace, computing education is emphasized for students of all levels and disciplines in Taiwan. However, the computing education in Taiwan can hardly be recognized as effective and satisfactory. Many inappropriate examples that lack context are used in teaching and textbooks that may result in employees with low competence and insufficient ability for collaborative working. Students who grow up in this learning context usually lack the ability to seek information and solve problems by themselves. In this regard, the author redesigned a course and adopted online collaborative learning with initiation to establish the essential knowledge for students’ collaboration in the initial stage of a course. This study conducted an experiment that included 169 undergraduates from three class sections – the first two from an academic university (Case 1, n = 68; Case 2, n = 68) and the last one from a university of science and technology (Case 3, n = 33) – taught by the same teacher under the same course name and the same course website. The results show that students who received online collaborative learning with initiation had higher grades than those without. The author further discusses the implications for teachers, schools, and scholars who plan to provide online courses for their students, particularly computing courses.

Introduction

In today’s workplace, students are expected to develop workplace skills including collaborative problem-solving skills (American Association of Two-Year Colleges, 2006). It is also indicated that employees should have a substantial foundation in basic skills and the ability to use technology to solve important problems (Bottge, Rueda, Kwon, Grant, & LaRoque, 2009). As more and more people use computers to complete their work and solve problems in the workplace, computing education is emphasized for students of all levels and disciplines in Taiwan. In many countries, including the USA and Taiwan, college students are required to take at least one introductory computer course to enhance their computer literacy and computing skills (Sun, Tsai, Finger, Chen, & Yeh, 2008). However, many of the course contents are divided into disjointed fragments. The examples that lack context in textbooks and used by lecturers may result in employees with low competence and insufficient ability for collaborative work (Shen, Lee, Tsai, & Ting, 2008). Thus, the computing education in Taiwan can hardly be recognized as effective and satisfactory (Lee, Shen, & Tsai, 2008). This means that if educational institutions do not change and teach their students to work together – collaborate – they may well find their students marginalized as prospective employees (McInnerney & Roberts, 2002).

To respond to this challenge, we turn to the approach of collaborative learning, which describes situations in which two or more subjects synchronously and interactively build a joint solution to some problems (Dillenbourg & Schneider, 1995). The literature on this genre of learning has identified a range of behaviors that characterize successful collaborative learning in face-to-face situations (Curtis & Lawson, 2001). It contributes to deeper level learning, shared understanding, critical thinking, and long-term retention of the learned material (Garrison et al., 2001, Johnson and Johnson, 1999, Kreijns et al., 2003). Therefore, it is believed that collaborative learning could contribute to the development of students’ computing skills and competence.

Understanding how to use the Internet to support collaborative learning and interaction presents a substantial challenge for the designers and users of this emerging technology (Galimberti, Ignazi, Vercesi, & Riva, 2001). The increasing adoption of web-based problem-solving learning and the growth in online learning each reflect the shift away from teaching as a means of transmitting information, and towards supporting learning as a student-generated activity (Kim et al., 2002, Savin-Baden, 2007). Moreover, it is also indicated that there is a huge gap between the theoretic ideal and the practical realization of these innovative approaches. Effective models, principles, and guidelines are needed by educators, academic administrators, and instructional designers who are prepared to challenge the dominant teaching practices in higher education (Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2004). Thus, the author adopted online collaborative learning and examined its effects on developing students’ computing skills in this study.

Learning is fundamentally a social process, and the Internet has an extraordinary potential to facilitate new kinds of learning relationships (Bruckman, 2002). Advanced technologies might overcome some of the barriers to learners’ interaction and support collaborative work to synthesize shared knowledge (Huang, 2002). Groups of online learners can motivate and support one another’s learning experiences (Bruckman, 2002). In this regard, the author integrated educational technologies into the implementation of online collaborative learning. However, students in Taiwan generally lack the ability to seek essential information and solve the problems they face by themselves as they have gotten used to a “spoon-feeding” teaching method since they were children (Shen et al., 2008). Students who grew up in this learning context may need more assistance and guide from their teachers, particularly in online learning environments. Hence, it is difficult for students to effectively collaborate without building up essential knowledge and being helped to climb their learning curve in the initial stage of the implementation of online collaborative learning. That is, in online learning environments without teacher’s on-the-spot assistance, the effects of online collaborative learning may be limited if the teacher implements collaborative learning directly. Students may suffer in an online course integrated with online collaborative learning if they do not develop essential knowledge first. Therefore, the author adopted online collaborative learning with teacher’s initiation to build up students’ basic knowledge and essential skills in the initial stage of a blended computing course titled ‘Applied Information Technology: Networking’. In this study, the author conducted a series of quasi-experiments to examine the effects of online collaborative learning with initiation on students’ computing skills.

This article first describes the background and problems in the computing courses in Taiwan, and the need for collaborative learning and teachers’ initiation in Section 1. Related literature about the effects and validity of online collaborative learning and initiation is individually portrayed in Section 2. Subsequently, the Section 3 illustrates the research design, the experimental design and procedure, the treatment of online collaborative learning and initiation, along with how students’ computing skills were evaluated and both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Then, the testing and analysis of data are presented in the Section 4. Finally, the main findings and possible implications for teachers and schools are addressed in the Sections 5 Discussion and implications, 6 Conclusion.

Section snippets

Conceptual framework

This work is closely related to prior research in two research fields. More specifically, two variables used in this paper, online collaborative learning and initiation are introduced. The definitions, effects, applications, and related literature of online collaborative learning and initiation are addressed in this section. The importance of collaborative learning and initiation in online learning environments is also stated.

Subjects

The subjects in this study are 169 undergraduates from three class sections taking a compulsory course titled ‘Applied Information Technology: Networking’ in Taiwan. Students in the first class section came from the Department of Security Management (Case 1, n = 68), and those in the second from the Department of Counseling and Industrial-Organizational Psychology at an academic university (Case 2, n = 68) are experimental groups, while those in the third class came from the Department of Business

The effects of teacher’s initiation in online collaborative learning

The independent samples t-test is used to compare students’ computing skills between Case 1 (that received online collaborative with initiation) and Case 2 (that received online collaborative without initiation). The results in Table 1 show significant difference in scores of Case 1 students’ computing skills (86.1824) compared with those in Case 2 (82.8382).

Besides the statistical data, in the interview with students from Case 1 who received teacher’s initiation, one student explained why

Discussion and implications

New technologies, such as Internet, provide teachers with many tools that can be used to improve the teaching and learning process (Martin-Blas & Serrano-Fernandez, 2009). Online learning provides flexibility and potential for applying innovative teaching and learning strategies (Chen, Wei, Wu, & Uden, 2009); however, much online instructions has not, in fact, produced the expected learning performance (Yang & Tsai, 2008). Few studies have discussed effective online teaching methods for both

Conclusion

Innovations in e-learning technologies point toward a revolution in education, enhancing learners’ interactions with others (collaborative learning), allowing learning to be individualized, and transforming the role of the teacher (Ruiz, Mintzer, & Leipzig, 2006). In the last decade, a large number of studies in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) have assessed how social interaction, learning processes and outcomes in virtual settings are intertwined (Rienties, Tempelaar, den

Acknowledgement

The author would like to express appreciation for the financial support of NSC96-2416-H-004-016-MY2 from the National Science Council, Taiwan, ROC.

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