on each other's documents or outputs and check if
the feedback was reflected in the revised documents.
Few students questioned the need for this kind of
assignment due to its complexity. Other students
replied that in order to succeed in a project in their
workplaces (mostly technological and software
companies) they have to cooperate within their
teams and sometimes with other teams. They stated
that collaborative assignment encouraged individual
thinking as each team is in charge on leading a task
and in addition, each team is committed to the
success of the whole assignment. Another feedback
was on the group structure, students complained that
they were missing the instructor role while other
groups replied that they have nominated a group
chair that was in charge on the timeline and to
encourage the group members. Most of the students
expressed that during the first assignment they
learned how to collaborate and that the second
assignment was easier on this aspect (but more
difficult on the subject matter).
Another possible reason for the low rate of
feedback form-filling on collaborative lessons is that
students gave feedback to each other within the
collaborative environment many times during the
assignment period. They might have felt that they
did their job already.
It is worthy to notice that few students didn't like
the e-learning or the collaborative lessons. This
finding may have two possible implications about
the HCI 2002/3 course. One the one side, the course
does not match all types of students. Some students
may prefer to work alone. For those students the
collaborative assignment may be very difficult. On
the other side, the HCI 2002/3 course is very varied,
enabling students with different learning styles to
perform better in their preferred kind of lesson.
We conclude that the HCI 2002/3 course enabled
students to achieve several goals: to learn theoretical
principles, technologies, development and
evaluation methodologies through the F2F and web-
based lessons as well as practicing the topics learnt
through discussions and implementation within the
collaborative environment. It seems that this kind of
course has many advantages as well as several
drawbacks that should be considered before
adopting the mixed model.
REFERENCES
Alavi, M. 1994. Computer-Mediated Collaborative
Learning: An Empirical Evaluation, MIS Quarterly,
Vol. 18, No. 2 159-174.
Bouton, C. & Garth, R.Y. (Eds.) 1983. Learning in
Groups, New Directions in Teaching and Learning,
No. 14, Jossey-Bass Inc., San Francisco, CA.
Bruffee, K. A. 1984. Background and history to
collaborative learning in American college, College
English, Vol. 46, No. 7 635-652.
Clark, J. 2000. Collaboration Tools in Online Learning
Environments http://www.aln.org/alnweb/
magazine/Vol4_issue1/Clark.htm.
Harasim, L. Ed. 1990. On-line Education: Perspective on
a new medium, Praeger/Greenwood, New York, NY.
Harasim, L. 1991. Designs and tools to augment
collaboration in computerized conferencing systems,
Proceedings of the Hawaiian International
Conference on Systems Science, Vol. 5 379-385.
Harasim, L. 2000a. The Virtual University: A State of the
Art in Advances in Computers, Book Series, Vol. 54,
Academic Press.
Harasim, L. 2000b.
Shift Happens: Online Education as a
New Paradigm in Learning
, Internet and Higher
Education: Special Issue, Vol. 3, No. 1. Elsevier
Science, UK 41-61.
Hiltz, R. 1994. The virtual classroom: Learning without
limits via computer networks, Human-Computer
Interaction Series.: Ablex Publishing Corp. New
Jersey .
Hiltz, S.R. and Benbunan-Fich, R. 1997. Supporting
Collaborative in Asynchronous Learning Network,
invited keynote address for the UNESCO/ Open
University Symposium on Virtual Learning
Environment and the Role of the Teacher, NJ Inst.of
Tech. http://eies.njit.edu/~hiltz/CRProject/unesco.htm.
Hiltz, R. and Wellman, B. 1997. Asynchronous learning
networks as a virtual classroom, Communications of
the ACM, Vol. 40, No.9 44-49.
Johnson, D.W. 1981. Student-student interaction: the
neglected variable in education, Educational
Research, Vol. 10, N.1 5-10.
Johnson, D.W. and Johnson, R.T. 1975. Learning together
and alone: Cooperation, competition and
individualizations, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall,
New Jersey.
Lehtinen, E., Hakkarainen, K., Lipponen, L., Rahikainen,
M., & Muukkonen, H. 2000. Computer Supported
Collaborative Learning: A review, In H. Meijden, R.
Simons, & F. de Jong (Eds.), Computer supported
collaborative learning in primary and secondary
education. Report for the EC, Project 2017, University
of Nijmegen.
www.kas.utu.fi/papers/clnet/
clnetreport.html
1-46.
Nielsen, J. 1993. Usability Engineering, AP Professional.
23-37.
Ramiller, N.C. 2002. The Virtual Interactive Project:
Teaching Analysis and Design Through Narrative and
Drama, Communications of the Association of
Information Systems, Vol. 9, No. 1, July.
ICEIS 2005 - SPECIAL SESSION ON EFFICACY OF E-LEARNING SYSTEMS
212