Empowering electronic courses by introducing collaborative activities

1
Empowering electronic courses by introducing
collaborative activities
A case study Introductory eBusiness eCourse for
students of Computer Science

• Ž. Komlenov, D. Pešovic, Z. Budimac
• Department of Mathematics and Informatics
• Faculty of Science, University of Novi Sad

2
Empowering electronic courses by introducing
collaborative activities overview

• Investigating current practice of collaborative
  learning in Computer Science courses
• Introducing it into our own teaching endavours at
  an early stage of studies introductory course
  on eBusiness
• Open source toolbox (Moodle, Magento, WordPress)
• Collaborative assignments (wiki, eStore, business
  blog)
• Promising results

3
Empowering electronic courses by introducing
collaborative activities contents

• eLearning trends
• Contemporary tools for learning
• Goals and challenges
• Collaborative learning in Computer Science
  courses
• Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
  course
• Course structure
• Toolbox
• Collaborative activities
• Results
• Conclusions and further work

3
4
eLearning trends

• High quality eLearning succeeds only when
  designers understand the
• educational
• economic
• technical challenges they face
• and the best practices to address them
• Concept of eCourses
• Learning management systems reign
• Emergence of Web 2.0, and consequently eLearning
  2.0
• Enabling and encouraging participation through
  open applications and services
• Aiming at collaborative nature of learning
• Bringing focus on content syndication, its reuse,
  adaptation, and personalization

5
Contemporary tools for learning

• Content is
• used rather than read
• more likely to be produced by students than
  courseware authors
• Modern eLearning platform becomes
• a personal learning centre, where content is
  reused and remixed according to the students
  needs and interests
• not a single application, but a collection of
  interoperating applications an environment
  rather than a system
• Educational institutions tend to apply
  interlocking sets of open source applications
• In our case as means of introducing collaborative
  activities in an introductory eBusiness course

6
Goals and challenges

• Collaborative work bravely introduced to
  first-year students, together with Web 2.0 tools
• Goal to allow students, grouped in appropriate
  teams of 3-5 collaborators, to go through several
  phases of an imaginary eBusiness development
• Giving them possibility to learn how to use Web
  2.0 tools
• Helping them in gaining soft skills and valuable
  experience through team effort
• Beneficial experience for institutions
• having similar courses in their curricula
• that are struggling with incorporating
  interactive Web 2.0 tools in their teaching
  practice while maintaining an ever
  growing LMS

7
Collaborative learning in Computer Science courses

• Collaboration in an online course through small
  group projects, simulations, case study work, or
  using other methods
• Enhances problem-solving and enjoyment of the
  task
• Presents the heart of any learner-centered online
  course
• Is the best way to tap into all learning styles
  present in the group
• Is quite appropriate for Computer Science
  courses, since new knowledge is often applied to
  complex and unstructured tasks
• Most courses in systems analysis and design and
  many programming courses require students to work
  on group projects
• As well as a number of courses in computer
  architecture, graphics, software engineering,
  database design, project management, multimedia
  and interface design, database management
  systems, information systems analysis and design,
  etc.

8
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
course

• Introductory course on eBusiness
• Offered to students of Computer Science in the
  first year of their studies
• A blended course that proposes student-centred
  learning
• Conducted using contemporary eLearning
  technologies
• Particularly eLearning 2.0 tools for the
  implementation of collaborative activities, which
  have been gradually introduced
• Students are required to build their knowledge
  through activities that engage them in active
  learning
• Thematically, similar courses are quite rarely
  offered in this way, especially to first-year
  students

9
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseCourse structure

• Crucial eBusiness topics, offered as lectures and
  exercises, together with supporting online
  resources and activities
• A certain amount of advanced topics provided as
  additional self-study material
• Students can (on voluntary basis)
• use discussion boards/participate in chat
  sessions
• form databases of useful links
• explore eLessons that test their progress in
  gaining new knowledge
• For grading purposes
• three online tests are delivered during the
  semester in the controlled environment (results
  produced form 60 of students final grades)
• collaborative activities are performed completely
  online (forming the remaining 40 of the grades)

10
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseToolbox

• Most LMSs-like platforms focus more on
  distribution of learning material than social
  interaction or possibilities to construct shared
  knowledge
• We have opted for some specific additional tools
  in order to fulfil the possibilities offered by
  the chosen LMS (Moodle)
• eCommerce platform Magento
• Blogging tool WordPress
• Exclusively open source solutions
• Considerable initial cost savings
• Flexibility and availability of additional
  features
• Possibility to extend and customize them
  according ones specific needs

11
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseToolbox Moodle

• A reasonable decision to use an existing
  eLearning platform instead of developing a new
  one from scratch
• Thorough market analyses of the established open
  source general purpose LMS solutions
• Moodle as the final choice, for its fine basic
  features and great extensibility potential
• Successfully used at our Department since 2004
• eBusiness course built in Moodle, using a variety
  of its modules
• Some of the assignments set up and solved within
  it (for instance using Wiki module)
• For others additional applications are used
• subject-specific tools (for instance an eCommerce
  platform)
• more powerful versions of means of collaboration
  compared to the ones existing in
  Moodle (e.g. advanced blogging
  functionality)

12
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseToolbox Magento

• One of the best open source eCommerce platforms
• Wide range of customization and fine-tuning
  capabilities
• Modular architecture each module is responsible
  for certain type of features, processes or
  activities
• analytics and reporting
• catalogue browsing
• customer accounts
• order management
• search engine optimization
• marketing promotions and tools
• Reasonable complexity of the platform
• Support for the development of multiple Web
  stores within one Magento-powered site

13
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseToolbox WordPress

• A rather popular blog publishing application and
  content management system, having
• a templating system, including various widgets
• themes
• integrated link management
• a search engine-friendly, clean permalink
  structure
• the ability to assign nested, multiple categories
  to articles
• multiple author capability
• support for tagging of posts and articles
• a rich plug-in architecture
• Offers a nice balance of functionality and
  stability
• Allows an arbitrary number of simultaneous blogs
  to exist within one installation

13
14
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseCollaborative activities

• Inclusion of group exercises can help students
  get diverse ideas, views, opinions and feedback
• A set of team assignments, all gathered around
  one big goal thinking of the online presence of
  an imaginary eCommerce company/organization
• Self-assigned groups of students (35 per group)
• Both individual and team effort taken into
  consideration while grading the assignments,
  based on
• the success of the final products
• the teams own assessment of their operations
• professionalism (attendance at meetings,
  cooperative attitude)
• initiative (suggesting ideas, working towards
  common goals)
• independence (completion of tasks at agreed-upon
  deadlines, researching topics and
  sharing resources)

14
15
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseA set of assignments

• Online business model
• Of an imaginary eCommerce company/organization
• In a wiki form (created using the appropriate
  Moodles module)
• eCommerce Web site
• Putting the business model into practice
  building a Magento eStore
• Marketing tools and promotions
• Improving the eStore focusing on usage of
  Magentos marketing tools and promotion
  mechanisms pricing rules, customer groups, time
  period, landing pages for campaigns, polls,
  newsletters, etc.
• Business blog
• Creating a business blog in WordPress and
  maintaining it for a while to
  build up the online presence of the
  company/organization

15
16
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseResults

• In 2008 we had 71 students
• Growing interest in the course topics (41 student
  in 2007)
• In 2009 (67 students) we introduced the presented
  set of collaborative assignments in our teaching
  and grading scheme
• Only the first assignment was experimentally
  introduced even in previous course runs
• Still comparable results, with remarks on the way
  students dealt with new practical collaborative
  assignments
• Final grades on a scale from 5 to 10, 10 being
  the highest mark, and 5 standing for students
  that failed the course
• Similar to a certain extent in 2008 and 2009
• Smaller amount of both highest grades and
  students that did not pass the course in 2009
• The overall distribution of grades seems to be
  more reasonable

16
17
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseFinal grades

• Comparison of final grades accomplished in 2008
  and 2009

17
18
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseTeamwork analysis

• Students generally managed to solve all the tasks
  successfully
• They could deal not only with new technologies
  but also with gaining soft skills needed for
  effective working in teams
• Some of the assignments received with greater
  enthusiasm
• naturally the first one and later the last one as
  the end of the semester approached
• Assignment 3, improving the eStores focusing on
  the use of marketing tools and promotions, was
  the most difficult one
• possibly because it assumed both the fulfilments
  and corrections of the previous task
• it also required the students to learn how to use
  a complex set of Magentos marketing tools in a
  short period of time in the busiest part of the
  semester

18
19
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseAverage grades on team assignments

• Average grades on team assignments in 2009

19
20
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseCount of individual grades on team
assignments

• Count of individual grades on team assignments in
  2009

20
21
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseChosen solutions Assignment 1
21
22
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseChosen solutions Assignments 2 3
22
23
Collaborative learning in practice eBusiness
courseChosen solutions Assignment 4
23
24
Conclusions

• Collaborative work performed by students requires
  careful planning on the part of the instructor,
  and is not without its difficulties for students
• But the benefits can be substantial
• increased participation by students in all parts
  of the course
• better understanding and retention of material
• mastery of various soft skills
• increased enthusiasm for self-directed learning
• Students achieved admirable results, and the
  majority of them passed the exam smoothly
• They were satisfied with the newly developed
  competences for successful working in teams
• Usage of Web 2.0 tools was particularly
  convenient in our circumstances

24
25
Further work

• Developing more subtle mechanisms for group
  formation and teamwork evaluation
• Control of group formation process, specially
  paying attention to the diversity of groups with
  respect to personal characteristics, learning
  styles and pre-knowledge of potential group
  members
• Although students generally like to choose their
  own co-workers for group assignments,
  student-selected groups under-perform when
  compared to instructor-selected ones
• Employing techniques of data mining in order to
• form and analyse student profiles for group
  formation
• develop some instruments that would help us in
  the process of teamwork assessment

25
26
Questions/Comments?