Using Shared Workspaces in Higher Education

We evaluate the use of BSCW shared workspaces in higher education by means of a comparison of seven courses in which this environment was used. We identify a number of different functions for which the BSCW environment has been used and discuss the relative success of these functions across the cases. In addition, we evaluate the cases with the 4E model of Collis et al. (2000) which predicts the chances of acceptance of ICT in an educational setting. Effectiveness for the given task appears to be a prime success factor for using ICT. But an effective tool may fail due to other factors like ease of use and organisational, socialcultural or technological obstacles. The particular strength of a shared workspace, for which BSCW is most effective and efficient, is providing a repository for objects of collaborative work. Other types of usage showed mixed results. In the future we expect that learning takes place in an integrated, open ICT environment in which different kinds of tools are available for different purposes and users can switch between tools as appropriate. We could observe this in several of the case studies, where non-use of BSCW did not mean that a particular task was not performed, but, on the contrary, a more efficient solution for the same function was available. Shared workspaces have proven to be highly useful, but it seems advisable that their purpose be limited to what they were originally designed for

Web-Support for Activating Use of Theory in Group-Based Learning

This paper describes a series of experiments conducted within the context of a\ud course on organisational theory which is taught at the Department of Management \ud Sciences at the University of Twente. In 1997 a group-based learning approach was adopted but after the first year it was apparent that acquisition and application of theory by student groups was inadequate. In an attempt to remedy this problem a Web-based collaborative work environment was introduced in 1998 with the intention of encouraging students to read relevant theoretical material and also to reflect more on what they had read. In addition to hosting a ‘theory repository’, the collaborative work environment was designed to control the flow of work and to enforce rules for groups’ access to the output of other groups, based on their own performance. Further changes were made and a third edition of the course was run and evaluated in 1999. A description of the educational setting and the Web-based "Theory repository" is presented. The evaluation results over the period 1997-1999 are presented and discussed. The extent to which the discipline of reading improved was evaluated, as were the effects on insight into theory. It turns out that the technical realisation works well. Uptake of the instructional tasks for reflection, however, only takes place if these tasks are perceived as being helpful