These events encouraged me to do more research on the topic of collaborative tools. What I have now learned is that students must also be engaged (Engagement) with the tools. I now realized that I was addressing only part of what I wanted to accomplish with Collaborative learning for my students.
Carnegie Mellon's, Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation addresses Collaborative tools and learning . Here is the synopsis from their site Collborative Tools based on a White paper literature review (2009) of collaborative learning, assessment, and tools. Download Collaboration Tools White Paper
Collaborative learning is essentially people working together to solve a problem, create a product, or derive meaning from a body of material. A central question or problem serves to organize and drive activities, and encourage application, analysis, and synthesis of course material. While the landscape of technology that can be used to support central activities of collaborative learning is vast and varied, it is often lumped together under a single label: "collaboration tools."
Tools that exist to support collaboration can:
- facilitate real-time and asynchronous text, voice, and video communication.
- assist in basic project management activities.
- support co-creation by enabling groups to modify output in real-time or asynchronously.
- facilitate consensus building through group discussions and polling.
- simplify and streamline resource management.
- enable local and remote presentation and archiving of completed projects.
If you are interested in these ideas and bringing Collabrative tools into your classroom I strongly recomment Carnegie Mellon's, White paper literature review (2009) of collaborative learning, assessment, and tools. Download Collaboration Tools White Paper
Communication
- Virtual Meetings
- Instant Messaging
- Screen Sharing
- Blogs
- Voice, Video, Web Conferencing
- Discussion Boards
Team Definition & Participant
- Social Networking
- Presence Management
- User Profiles
- Contact Management
Project Management
- Task Management
- Time Tracking
- Workflow Routing
- Milestones
- Calendaring
Resource Management
- File Storage
- Search
- Database Management
- Version Tracking
- Access Management
- Social Bookmarking
- Commenting
- Tagging
Co-Creation & Ideation
- Concept Mapping
- Wikis
- Virtual Whiteboards
- Real-Time Collaborative Editing
Consensus Building
- Polling
- Question Management
- Process Archiving
Presentation & Archiving
- Webinars
- Slide Shows
- Hosted Media Sharing