Lisa Rapple presented on embracing technology to enhance student collaboration. She discussed how tools like learning management systems, blogs, media, wikis, Google Docs, and LinkedIn can be used to address multiple learning styles, increase interaction, and create communities of learning. Some key benefits highlighted were allowing collaboration, feedback, and tracking performance while engaging global resources. The presentation provided examples and tips for using tools like Diigo for social bookmarking, Google Docs for collaborative writing, and Wikispaces for collaborative projects.

1. Embracing Technology
to Enhance Student Collaboration
Presented by:
Lisa Rapple, Faculty Program Director
Excelsior College

2. Why technology for
collaboration?
 Address multiple learning styles
 Increase interaction among participants
 Collaboration greatly enhances
learning
 Create communities of learning
 Provide feedback
 Assess and track performance
 Engage global resources, ideas, and
people

3. Technology to Deliver Content
 Learning Management System (LMS)
 Weblog (Blog)
◦ Faculty Blog
◦ Instructor Newsblog
 Media
◦ Web-Tutorial
◦ Embedded Video
(screencast-o-matic)

4. Interactive Tools – Social
Learning
◦ Wikis for co-authoring written and
multimedia projects
◦ GoogleDocs for collaborative writing,
idea sharing
◦ Blog for authentic learning (role-play)
◦ Social Bookmarking tool (Diigo)
◦ Multimedia discussions/critiques
(Voicethread)
◦ Polls and surveys (Zoomerang)
◦ LinkedIn for professionalism, building an
online profile, networking, resource
sharing

5. Social Bookmarking
Diigo.com
 Example of student collaborative
bookmarking
 Teacher console (Educator’s account)
 Group settings
◦ Students email not required for group enrollment
◦ Diigo group can be private to members only
◦ Combines discussion with website/resource sharing
◦ organize with tags

6. Collaborative Writing
www.drive.google.com
 Example of student collaborative writing
◦ Share settings
◦ History / transparency
◦ Students collaboratively-write
◦ No revisions are lost, everything is recoverable
◦ Finished work can be archived, shared, displayed in
a google-site portfolio
◦ Enhance with images, graphs, table of contents and
other ‘widgets’.

7. Collaborative Projects
Wikispaces
EDUCATOR’S ACCOUNT
 Example of student collaborative project
◦ Students collaboratively-build projects
◦ No revisions are lost, everything is recoverable.
◦ Finished work can be shared, receive comments
◦ Enhance with video images, graphs, table of contents
and other ‘widgets’.
◦ Projects are archived on the wiki page.
◦ Dynamic, multi-layered.

8. Professional Networking
Linkedin.com
 Example of collaborative classroom
◦ Manager’s choice
◦ Member’s join
◦ Create profiles/ exemplars of special interests
◦ Messages
◦ Concerns for privacy
◦ Send announcements/invitations
◦ Less scholarly, more ‘in the news’
◦ Explore other groups/special interests
◦ My instructions for LinkedIn activities

9. Final Points
Tips for using social technologies:
 Keep it simple in the beginning. Don’t overwhelm
yourself or students with too many changes or too
many technical challenges.
 Look for tools that are education friendly and have
good technical support. (ex., Wikispaces, LinkedIn &
Diigo)
 Teach the course once with an open mind.
Evaluate activities for opportunities to improve. Only
employ technology to IMPROVE your course.
 Think out of the box.
◦ There are things that the Internet can provide that a
closed classroom could not.
◦ Repurpose tools that you are familiar with or can
learn easily. Low tech can be highly purposeful.

10. Tips for using social technologies: Final Points
 Be aware of privacy settings on Internet tools.
Many technology enhancements that we spoke
about MAY be public (open to the Internet world)
so be aware of the tool’s settings and be sure
students are informed as well.
 Never use technology just for the flash and
sparkle, this will frustrate students and impede
good learning
 You can learn from your students. Don’t think
YOU have to be the creative one. Leave choices
open to students to create projects using a tool of
their choice. Possibly provide them with a
suggestion list.

11. Final Points
Additional easy tools to start with:
 Blogs – one of the easiest tools to learn for you or students.
(Blogspot.com)
◦ Have student teams create an informational blog.
◦ Collect student experiences/stories, responses to key issues, or
◦ Role-play (limited)
◦ Create a collective document (limited) for a target audience
 Polls/surveys – zoomerang.com
◦ highlight key learning points
◦ reinforce previous learning
◦ collect feedback
◦ Peer-review
 Voicethread.com – have a conversation around media
◦ You can create three for free
 Sliderocket.com / Brainshark – interactive PowerPoint
 Animoto.com – images and music (limited features in free version)

12. Questions?
Lisa Rapple, Faculty Program Director
Excelsior College, Albany, NY
lrapple@excelsior.edu

13. TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
GoogleDoc embedded in LMS
Student comments: advantages
A shared document
provided a very clean,
convenient interface.

14. TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
GoogleDoc embedded in LMS
Student comments: disadvantages
none

15. TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
Wikispaces
Student comments: advantage using wiki to collaborate
Everything is live and easily movable.
All the work could be seen and done in
one space without having to
transfer data out to another document.

16. TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
Wikispaces
There are less confusion, it is
easy to use and don’t have to
worry about any attachments.
People can edit the works
of others; has
version tracking.

17. TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
Wikispaces
Student comments: disadvantages
(technical) Skill level of team
members varied.

18. Wiki
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19. Blog
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20. Newsblog
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21. Web Tutorials
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