1 - Stanford University



THE COLLABORATION IN E-LEARNING PROJECT

(AUTUMN 2005 CS376 PROJECT MILESTONE #2)

Deepak Kumar ( David Tu

HYPOTHESIS

The hypothesis is that with a more structured collaborative e-learning environment and with built-in functional roles for the teacher and students, our prototype (CEP) will be a more effective learning environment than the current day collaborative e-learning environments.

In the book on e-learning by Clark and Mayer, the authors noted the lack of specific research on the effectiveness of collaboration in e-learning. But, they also provided research evidence that in traditional classroom learning environments, structure has a positive impact on both collaborative and individual learning. If a direct transference of the results to e-learning can be assumed, then it suggest that CEP will be ore effective than unstructured collaborative e-learning environments.

DEF: Structured – Containing mechanisms for facilitating discussions

DEF: Collaboration(tive) – Interactions between students and between the teacher and students

DEF: E-learning – Teaching of content from a teacher to a group of students

DEF: Functional roles – Teacher vs. student providing answer vs. student asking the question

DEF: Effective – Statistical difference in one of three categories: 1) level of enjoyment, 2) summative assessment scores, and 3) speed of learning

DEF: Current day collaborative e-learning – Typically, the collaborative e-learning programs today contains only e-mail, discussion boards, or chat, all of which are usually un-facilitated, therefore unstructured

EVALUATION PLAN

Learner Profile

The learners for our evaluation will be four graduate students at Stanford University. They use the Internet for their learning needs and have used e-learning courses as well as collaborative tools, such as chat, discussion forums, and Web broadcast.

Setting

The setting for the study will be a classroom in the School of Education. The study will be divided into four sessions, a learner per session. In each session, the learners will interact with the two researchers, David and Deepak, in the classroom. Each session of the study will last for one hour. The time allocated for pre-study interviews will be fifteen minutes per student, the interaction of the users with the Macromedia Flash prototypes will be half an hour, and the post-study interviews will again be fifteen minutes.

Pre-study Interviews

We will give the learners a questionnaire with several sets of questions based on their learning needs, their prevalent learning methods and practices, features of the e-learning environment they are familiar with, and features of the collaborative tools they use most frequently. The session will be audio recorded.

Methodology

We will use Macromedia Flash prototype of our suggested design solution to evaluate the usability of the user interface. We will also try to find out if the application with the new features has the intended benefits for the users.

Observations

The entire session when the users interact with the prototype will be video recorded. This will help us see the session multiple times in detail and analyze the users’ behavior and practices.

Post-study Interviews

We will give the learners a questionnaire with several sets of questions on their experience with the prototype. Specifically, the questions will ask them how easy do they think is the application to use, what features of the application did they find most useful, what features do they think should be added or removed or modified, and why. The session will be audio recorded.

Further Studies

Although a full summative assessment plan on comparing what the learners learned from the use of our prototype vs. the traditional collaborative e-learning environment would be helpful, it is not possible in the time frame of this project. Therefore, this evaluation plan focuses on determining if the learners like the structure provided by the current prototype.

CURRENT PROTOTYPE

The current prototype consists of a partially drawn out story-board (see below).

To get to this point, we first interviewed a e-learning professor at Stanford University School of Education (SUSE), from which we observed that the current state of thinking about collaboration in e-learning is still one which to cram as much leading-edge technologies into the current e-learning models as possible. Furthermore, there is a sense that simply by seeing, whether through discussion boards/chat, screen captures, or even 3-D recreations, what the other person is doing, then effective collaboration can take place. Although there is definitely a place for research into future technologies in this respect, what we argue is that an adaptation of current day technologies to allow for some form of structure will greatly benefit collaboration in e-learning.

From there, we conducted a thought-exercise on ourselves. What should the lesson look like?

1. Starting with the teacher lecturing, what should the students see? We decided that to minimize the cognitive load on the visual channel, the only thing the students should see is the real-time video of what the teacher is working on, and not the teacher’s face. Additionally, the students will hear the teacher’s voice.

2. How to ask a question during lecture? There will be icons of students and the teacher on the right hand side (static photos). The student (Bob) will first look through the student icons, to see if someone raised a similar question already. If so, Bob will simply add on to that student’s question by clicking on the icon of that student, and type in a follow-up question. If not, Bob will click on the teacher’s icon and type in an original question.

3. How will the teacher respond to questions? The teacher will see icons of students (real-time photos). Students with questions will have their icons flashing and the icons will be positioned at the top of the list of students. Dragging that student’s icon onto the main program window will display their question prominently on the bottom of that window, and all the students will see that question. The teacher may then show examples on how to deal with that problem, or simply talk about it. At the same time, students may add follow-up questions by clicking on the main program window and typing in their follow-up. This way, the focus of the teacher and student will be on that current question, until all questions are answered.

After lecturing, the students will go into practice mode, which we also have thought-exercise for, but will not discuss in more details here (see appendix).

[pic]

(Current Prototype – Story-board)

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

Our next step is to draw out the story-board of the practice mode. Then, a non-functional prototype will be developed, using Macromedia Flash. We considered developing a lo-fi prototype using paper, or using Microsoft Powerpoint. For the former, because we want to exhibit the differences between video and static photo, we chose to go digital. For the latter, because we both have a need to learn Macromedia Flash for educational purposes, we chose Macromedia Flash over Microsoft Powerpoint. But, the prototype will be non-functional in that the actual interactivities will not be built in. Thus, an example of a run-through with the users will be:

Faciliator – Now you are looking at the lecture and all is good. But, at some point you have a question. The question is “how did you make the colors change on that text?” So you want to ask the teacher. To do so, first you look at the list of students and the teacher. Did you see any student having that same question?

User – No, but Bob has a question about underlying text, it is shown below his photo.

Facilitator – Good, so now click on Bob’s icon (the icon will be clickable at that point and that point only).

User – [Click, and the page transitions into one where Bob’s photo will be followed by his question and the question “how did you make the colors change on that text]

Facilitator – Ok, so you clicked on Bob’s icon, which will open up a text file under his question, where you can type in your question… for now, lets assume that is all done.

Facilitator – Next, you have another question. The question is “how did you make that text link to another page?” So, what would you do?

User – I would look at the list of students. And I did not find anyone having that same question.

Facilitator – So, at this step you will click on the teacher’s icon.

User – [Click, and the page transitions into one where teacher’s photo will be followed by your question]

Facilitator – Ok, so you clicked on the teacher’s icon, which will open up a text file under her phto, where you can type in your question… for now, lets assume that is all done.

This prototype will then be subjected to user testing. After getting some initial feedback, modifications to the story-board will be made, and new prototype developed. Then, if time permits, a partially functional prototype for the student side will be built, without all the art and backend system (ie. videos will not be recorded, there will be no network connection outside of the student’s computer, etc..). This prototype will then be subjected to further user testing.

RELATED WORK

1. Proceedings of I-KNOW ’04

Graz, Austria, June 30 - July 2, 2004

Hybrid Learning Leads to Better Achievement and

Higher Satisfaction than Pure eLearning. Is it that Easy?

Manuela Paechter

In this paper, different online facilities for collaboration and communication were compared to each other to design a blended e-learning solution. It was investigated how efficient learners collaborate in these settings and how satisfied they are.

2. eLEARNING COMMUNITIES

Chih-Hsiung Tu, Michael Corry

The George Washington University

This research paper focuses on studies on the role online communities play in eLearning because effective learning occurs where there is active social communication and interaction. This hypothesis is examined by considering effective eLearning communities, discussing the impact of eLearning communities on human learning, reviewing frameworks used for examining eLeaming communities, and proposing a refined theoretical framework for future research and development.

REFERENCE

(Bonk 2002) Bonk, Curtis J.



Clark, R.C. & Mayer R.E. (2003) E-Learning and the Science of Instruction. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. (ISBN: 0787960519)

Kaplan, Soren 2002



Leung, Peggy 2005



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