When students work together they learn from one another and extend their interaction and learning outside of classroom. Busy schedules and commuting students often make group work difficult to coordinate. When properly applied, technology can eliminate these barriers to collaboration.
Common Goals
- Provide a comfortable setting for student collaboration and cooperation.
- Enable convenient collaboration from any place and at any time.
- Archive meeting notes and student exchanges.
- Provide students with experience and support in teamwork.
- Help students learn from each other.
Options
Options for promoting student collaboration are suggested below.
Electronic discussion
Email and a suite of other tools in this category can help you disseminate information widely and set up alternative forums for class discussions, extending the opportunity for students to exchange ideas outside the classroom. Students may continue small group discussions through a threaded newsgroup. Study groups and project teams can also coordinate their efforts online through email and online discussion groups. Mailman is the Web-based email list manager supported by UW Technology, and can help you set up and manage email lists for courses or other groups.
Wiki
A wiki is a Web site that can be viewed and easily edited by anyone with Internet access and a Web browser. They can be a very useful tool for student collaboration and cooperation. Not only can students easily collaborate on a project using a wiki, they can also easily make it public and invite experts in the field to react to their contribution.
Campus Resources
- Learning Technologies Workshops – UW-IT offers workshops to help you use the tools and technologies you need to promote collaboration. Participation in these workshops are free for all UW instructors, employees, and students. Advance registration is required for some workshops.
- Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) – CTL offers a variety of resources and services designed to promote effective teaching and learning. The center is open to all UW faculty and teaching assistants.