Exploiting connectedness in the informatics curriculum

The power of modern communication technology gives us an opportunity, as Informatics educators, to enhance our ability to develop our students' skills in virtual teamworking. We discuss why virtual teamworking is as relevant for students in traditional campus-based universities as it is in a distance learning context. We highlight some of the questions to be answered, and some of the problems to be overcome, in the context of our experiences in designing and delivering a virtual teamworking course at the UK Open University

Developing Online Team Skills

This paper discusses the development and delivery of a new course at the UK Open University (OU). The course makes a virtue of the fact that OU students study in a predominantly distance learning environment, by providing a structure within which team working activities are carried out with no face-to-face contact whatsoever. Issues that were considered in designing this course and decisions about tutoring and assessing the students' team working experience are discussed. Preliminary results from the first delivery of the course, including analysis of archived team conferences, are presented. Directions for future development and enhancement are indicated

Learning about online collaboration: pedagogical perspectives

Much SoTL literature on online student collaboration does not adequately address issues such as why collaborative activity is undertaken, what students are expected to gain from it, or the role of the tutor in the development of students’ collaborative skills. In this paper we discuss our approach to these issues in the design of our online course ‘Teamworking in distributed environments' and report on student and tutor responses to its first presentations

Online collaborative activities: the developmental dimension

Online collaboration should be integral to students' learning experience. We present a helical model explicitly representing the developmental dimension of collaborative activity and discuss its benefits for designing courses. We report on application of this model to our virtual teamworking course and our associated trials of tools for collaboration

C is for collaboration: A Developmental Perspective

Recent advances in the technology to support Computer-Mediated Interaction make it possible to include significant experience of online collaborative activity, ranging from simple conversational socialization to complex virtual teamworking projects, in undergraduate programs of study. To be of lasting value such experiences need to be developed progressively over a student's course of study. We introduce a model that provides a framework for taking an integrated overview of this developmental dimension, and discuss the nature of the increasingly sophisticated activities that might be undertaken at different stages in the process

Designing courses to develop online teamworking skills: a helical model

Experiences of online collaborative learning are increasingly part of what recent advances in technology to support computer-mediated interaction allow us to include in undergraduate courses. These experiences can range from simple conversations and socialisation to complex virtual teamworking projects. The sequence of such experiences needs to be structured and managed so that there is a developmental dimension both within a single course and also over a student's degree programme. When we consider existing models for learning, group working, and software process, none of them adequately incorporate a sense of development. In the light of reflection on our own experience of designing and delivering a virtual teamworking course, we present a new, helical model for online collaborative learning. This model, in addition to emphasising the cyclic nature of the collaborative activities undertaken by teams tasked with solving a complex problem, also incorporates a developmental dimension, based on reflection at the end of successive phases of the problem solving process

Truly virtual teams: (team) work-in-progress

This paper presents the recent involvement of the authors in the development of a new course at the UK's Open University (OU), which at the time of writing (Feb 2005) is in its first presentation. The course, entitled "M253: Team working in distributed environments", forms an integral part of the OU's named degree in Computing. It attempts to make a virtue of the fact that OU students study in a distance learning environment, by providing a structure within which team working activities are carried out with no face-to-face contact. Some of the problems encountered in designing this course and the decisions reached about how to manage and assess the students' experiences are discussed, and some directions for future development and enhancement are indicated

Exploiting Connectedness in the IS Curriculum

In this paper, we address the issue of how Information Systems educators can change their approach to teaching, by exploiting the power of modern communication technology to develop student skills in virtual teamworking. We highlight some of the questions to be answered and the problems to be overcome, and we introduce a course which attempts to provide some answer