This document discusses designing activities for online collaboration. It outlines Gilly Salmon's 5 stage model for online learning, including preliminary stages of access and socialization, and subject-specific stages of information exchange, knowledge construction, and development. It then provides a case study of online collaboration between students in structural engineering, architecture, and engineering project management. Key lessons from the case study include the importance of establishing trust online through social interaction, using different technologies suited to conveying information, convergence, and storing materials, and the need to design specific social activities to facilitate online relationships. The conclusion emphasizes that online collaboration can be effective for learning but requires a social aspect to maintain trust and communication.

1. Designing Activities for
Online Collaboration
Mark Childs

2. Gilly Salmon’s 5 stage model

3. Preliminary Stages
•Access. Need to logon, to find the right place,
and know how to take part. IT induction
should be through taking part in interesting e-
tivitities, clarify purpose of activity.
•Socialisation – helping people to develop
their online identities as individuals and
groups e.g. sharing hopes and expectations,
establishing group norms, exposing, exploring
and explaining differences.

4. Subject-specific stages
•Information exchange – e-tivities to promote
interaction and engagement. Need clear structures,
pacing and expectations as messages get more
frequent.
•Knowledge construction – becoming online authors.
Moderators role might be to weave, to keep it on
track, to introduce new theories and know when to
close the e-tivity.
•Development – participants concerned with
planning their own continuing development and
learning.

5. Supporting online interaction
Case study
•1st cycle Structural engineering (Coventry),
architecture (Ryerson)
•2nd cycle added Loughborough (engineering
project management)
•Online collaboration for design

6. Ryerson to Coventry

7. Transactional Distance/ I O model
Soetanto, R., Childs, M., Poh, P., Austin, S. and Hao, J. (2012) Global multidisciplinary learning in construction education:
Lessons from virtual collaboration of building design teams. Civil Engineering Dimension, 14(3), 173-181. ISSN 1410-
9530 print / ISSN 1979-570X online
Soetanto, R., Childs, M., Poh, P., Austin, S. and Hao, J. (2014) Virtual collaborative learning for building design.
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Management, Procurement and Law, 167, MP1, 25-34.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/mpal.13.00002

8. Professional
ethos
Completion
of tasks to
time
Greater
trust
Reliance on
other
alignments
diminishes
Greater co-
operation

9. Lack of
profession
al ethos
Failure to
complete
tasks to
time
Diminishing
trust
Greater
reliance on
other
alignments
Reduced
commitment
to
collaboration

10. Trust and social interaction
Only difference was when trust broke down, online found it
difficult to re-establish it.
Rourke et al, 1999 gives examples of studies in establishing trust
in online interactions:
•27% of the total message content consisted of expressions of
feeling, self introductions, jokes, compliments, greetings, and
closures.
•the more one discloses personal information, the more others
will reciprocate, and the more individuals know about each
other the more likely they are to establish trust, seek support,
and thus find satisfaction

11. Use of technology in collaboration
Students showed high degrees of digital literacy
•Selecting specific platforms to achieve specific
tasks
•Moving fluidly between them to achieve the
desired results.
•For quick communication all of the students used
Facebook
•used Dropbox for sharing documents.
•All used GoToMeeting.

12. Technologies for different modes
Technologies need to be able to:
–Transfer a lot of information from one person to
the others.  conveyance. Has to be the one all
people access frequently
–Be able to bring separate ideas together 
convergence. Has to be synchronous.
–A single location for storing and updating all
materials  “coherence”. DropBox. Googledocs.
M16BE – Cont Issues & Res Methodology

13. Lack of socialising online
•Opinion held by about half the students in the
class was “SCREENS ARE NOT ENGAGING” and
“I still believe face to face meetings are key to
success”
Yet:
•No small talk in GoToMeetings.
•No sharing of images.
•Maintaining a professional distance.

14. Lessons learnt by students
(we thought were self-evident)
•Not breaking off for private conversations.
•Effectively supplementing face-to-face behaviours to
compensate for less physical presence.
•Chairing meetings formally so that only one person
speaks at the same time and everyone gets a chance to
contribute.
•Planning and structuring meetings.
•Ensuring everyone is included.
•Eliminating echo.
•Taking into account students with disabilities.
•Don’t work in unsuitable areas.

15. Conclusion
• Online collaboration effective for learning
• But needs an online social aspect to maintain
trust and facilitate communication
• Students tend to pursue online social
relationships only with people they know offline.
Solely online connections need scaffolding.
• Therefore despite learners’ digital literacies, social
activity does not spontaneously occur
• Need to devise specific activities to facilitate.

16. Centre for Education Innovation
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/innovation/learning-teaching
• Curriculum design and learning technology support
• Learning Technology Officers are based in each College and on hand to
help:
–deliver workshops, drop-ins and training sessions for academics and
administrators
–understand how technologies can support or enhance a particular practice
–collaborate across the University through Community of Practice events
–explore and utilise learning technologies which meet their needs and the
needs of our students
–design and deliver free online courses
• innovationsystem@cardiff.ac.uk
• Centre for Education Innovation Learning Technologists
ceilt@cardiff.ac.uk.