Introduction
As Stevenson belives [1] Recent years have seen marked changes to the ways information, knowledge, and communication are transduced through web-enabled technologies. With the proliferation of the Internet, the world is now interconnected on an enormous scale. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have ushered in a new kind of anywhere, anytime computing that opens up the potential for learning more readily situated in real-world contexts. Much of our personal information now resides in “the cloud,” vast arrays of servers and networks around the world that seamlessly synchronize data between devices. The “wisdom of crowds” [2] is evidenced in the success of volunteer-driven, multiple-authored websites like Wikipedia, whilst the same principles that have culminated in near-universal access to the world’s information are now being turned into business models construed around users’ habits, browsing and search histories, interests, “likes” and friendship networks.
At a time, when data have become “the currency of the internet” [3], the decreasing relevance of old media is being eclipsed by the web and our interactions with it, and with one another. Making sense of the vast changes that have occurred with the Internet and the ways we use it for learning both formally and informally remain a challenge.
Much of the literature has indicated the considerable extent to which these technologies now afford online, real-time collaboration. As evidenced thus far, this kind of collaboration implies much more than web-mediated interaction. Early Web 2.0 technologies enabled collaboration to an extent, with learners able to contribute ideas to online spaces, most often through “posting” or submitting text and/or media to prescribed content areas on a web page. Examples of collaboration with these technologies included ideas shared in a threaded discussion, a section of a wiki, or a comments board; once posted, other learners were then able to view and respond to posts in similar pre-defined areas of the web page when the content was refreshed (e.g. If the page is revisited at a later stage or is reloaded in the browser).
Applications of these earlier Web 2.0 technologies to learning have led to research on the nature of collaboration as informed by modes of interactivity, including further analysis of synchronous and asynchronous interaction and the ways these modes are manifested between teachers, learners, and content [4]. Such research has presented, at various stages, cases for devising online activities that specifically incorporate both synchronous and asynchronous interaction in order to develop online collaboration skills as well as aligning specific applications with skills, curricula, and other elements of the learning design [5,6,7].
In another word, collaborative learning is when two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Unlike individual learning, people engaged in collaborative learning. Capitalize on one another’s resources and skills.
Properties, affordances, and signifiers
Properties: Internet network, a pc or laptop, or smartphone, and an e-learning platform can be counted as properties. The e-learning platform or website’s visual properties could be anything in terms of its color and location of icons, etc. Based on the website designer strategies. Having an account on the target website is another property.
Affordances: Logging in to the website and participating in an online course and then trying to have an online collaboration like live coding are affordances.
Signifiers: A website tool which enable online participation and colaboration
Seven Stages of Action
A theoretical framework that helps us create conceptual models to investigate human actions. It describes the relationship between goals and the physical actions to achieve those goals.
Goal
The goal is to be able to collaborate online with other students and teachers in an e-learning platform.
Execution
Plan: The user is excited to learn a new topic or master a skill like coding. This can be either a personal interest or maybe a project is assigned to him at his work and he needs to improve his knowledge or he is a student and needs the knowledge in a specific field. The user decides which e-learning platform to use. Also, this is the case that maybe the course in which the user participated in may not be available via a specific e-learning website/platform.
Specify: The user decides to participate in an online Java language course. But the course uses an e-learning website that does not support online collaboration tools and then live to code.
Perform: The user register for the course and download and install the required Java IDE recommended in the course and e-learning tool as well. And then starts working on the e-learning tool.
Evaluation
Perceive: The user thinks the e-learning tool is user-friendly and easy to learn the tool and work with. He understands basic concepts of Java language but when it comes to solving some problems during the class as an exercise, he has difficulty.
Interpret: the user believes that if the e-learning platform embedded any online collaborative tool he had the chance to code live and participate with his classmates and instructor so in this way he could benefit from others’ help and hints.
Compare: The user has heard of some other tools with online collaboration features and asked his friends to form a group to do their coding assignments using that tool at the same time and he figured out it is helpful for him to learn with live coding.
Potential Users
Both students and instructors can be counted as potential users of the online collaboration tool. As it gives all of them the chance to code online which helps the instructor to teach and guide the students more effectively and students can collaborate with each other and their teacher as well. When it comes to talking about why online collaboration matters, we can refer to research have been conducted in this field and study their outcomes.
Technologies with collaborative affordances can play in the development of skills in metacognition, planning, writing, and creativity.
In one higher education study, Wang, Ching-Huang, Yueh-Chiu, and Chun-Fu [8] found that “through [web-enabled] social dialogue, students explored more ideas and constructed further knowledge” than in traditional writing and planning tasks, resulting in higher levels of “autonomous learning” and “self-confidence”. In the same study, the authors explored the extent to which online collaboration with Web 2.0 applications could enhance learning within the Cooperative Learning framework [9], finding that the participants using Web 2.0 technologies scored higher in the areas of “content knowledge, group processing, social skills” and even “face-to-face interaction”.
References
1. M, Stevenson & J. G. Hedberg (2013) Learning and design with online real-time collaboration, Educational Media International, 50:2, 120-134.
2. Kittur, A. and R. Kraut (2008) “Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in wikipedia: quality through coordination,” in Proceedings of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 37-46.
3. Cavoukian, A. (2000). Should the OECD guidelines apply to personal data online?A Report to the 22nd International Conference of Data Protection Commissioners, Venice.
4. Anderson, T., & Elloumi, F. (Eds.). (2004). Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca: Athabasca University.
5. Burns, M. (2005). Tools for the mind. Educational Leadership, 63,48–53.
6. O’Reily, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0– O’Reilly media. Retrieved August 27, 2011, from http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
7. Prensky, M. (2005). Listen to the natives. Educational Leadership, 63,8–13.
8. Wang, J., Ching-Huang, W., Yueh-Chiu, F., & Chun-Fu, L. (2010). Benefits of Web 2.0 in the college writing classroom. International Journal of Learning, 17, 439–450.
9. Kagan, S., & Kagan, M. (1994). Cooperative learning. San Clemente, CA: Kagan.