Pros and Cons in Using Interact for Group Assignment Projects in Distance Education

Pros and Cons in Using Interact in Distance Education Lisa Soon

Overview
Group Assignment in Distance Education
Interact: What Tools to Use for Group Work?
Explore the Student Experience
Pros of Using Interact
Cons of Using Interact
Discussion

Group Project in Distance Education?
A subject may involve group assignment
Employers value group work skills
Group work prepare graduates for employments
Distance education students:
Different locations and time zones
Students don’t necessarily know each other
A lecturer groups the students
Student Characteristics:
Work in isolations – to encourage group work
Lack interactions and communications with others

Group Project in Distance Education!
Planning a group assignment in distance edu.
Can Interact (Sakai) be used for group work?
What Interact tools can help distance education students in their group work?
Students experienced difficulties or showed concerns on some tools. Can the tools be improved?
Significance and contribution
Students shared experience in group assignment projects
They learned interaction and communication skills required by future employers.

Interact: What Tools for Group Work?
Communications and Interaction
Forum
Chat room
Group email
Resources
Web contents
Calendar/announcement to plan and schedule interaction/communication
Freeware or other devices: skype, 3G roaming mobile, iphone, etc
Collaborative Reporting
Wiki /blog report
Word document - to be placed in a resource folder

Student Experience
Geographically Distributed and Different Time Zone
Full time workers meeting after office hours
Weekday night or weekend chats
Cultural Difference and Different Work Method
International Student
Language difficulty in chatting
Dominant students in group
Some groups lack leadership
Member conflicts

Pros of Using Interact
Tools generally help to
Share resources, experience and knowledge
Facilitate basic communication and collaboration
Plan and schedule tasks in Calendar and Announcement.
High Response Rate of Use and Adoption
Wiki report completed as required in an assignment
Most groups show an ability to use Interact tools competently

Cons of Using Interact
New CSU students training/difficulty?
Tools have limitations:
Calendar – for face-to-face teaching
Emails sent from Announcement, group emails and forums are tied with enrolment data – not to be edited,
Group emails – monitored by the lecturer
Wiki cannot be edited by two or more members at the same time - unexpected changes and destruction
Chat room – lack video or voice chat options
Forum – thread option to be made by default for easy viewing

Discussions
Who use and who monitor the use?
Students, teaching staff
Purpose of use?
DE vs face-to-face (e.g. Calendar)
Group assignment versus group communication in individual assignments
How each tool can be used at its optimum?
Is a tool effectively used?
Further training?
Improvement to the tool?

Suggestions Tool Limitation Improvement Wiki No control over multi-user editing
Provide help and tutorial information.
Allow multiple users to see who else are editing what section of a document.
Warn all users that only one person can save the wiki content at a time.
Chat Room Mainly PC-based
Support the use of chat room through Iphone, 3G roaming, Palmtop, etc.
Chat room in Interact should be enhanced to allow voice or video chatting.
Calendar Limited calendar activities for distance learners
Add online group discussions, event reminders, individual task deadline, and group assignment deadline.
Allow the use of different colours to indicate different levels of important events.
Resources No help information on how to organize materials
Allow the choices of some standard folder names such as readings, discussion notes, draft report, and shared materials.
Announcement/ Group email/ Forum Only send emails to pre-determined email addresses. Lack search options
Allow the additions of email addresses of private web-based emails. to their group members.
Support threading & searches in forums

Questions? Thank you

Pros and Cons in Using Interact for Group Assignment Projects in Distance Education

by AuSakai on Sep 25, 2009

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