An Online Collaborative Biology Simulation Used by Ukrainian

Students During the 2022 Russian Invasion

Leo A. Siiman

1 a

and Yelyzaveta Halchevska

Institute of Education, University of Tartu, Jakobi 5, 51005 Tartu, Estonia

STEAMLabs, 62 Alhambra Avenue, Toronto, ON, M6R 2S6, Canada

Keywords: Distance Learning, Collaboration, Interdependence, Digital Competence, Russo-Ukrainian War.

Abstract: Although the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted learning for students worldwide, the 2022 Russian invasion of

Ukraine has more severely impacted education for Ukrainian students. This study was conducted in the

context of an educational technology master's thesis (Halchevska, 2022) at the University of Tartu, Estonia.

A master’s student with Ukrainian background contacted a biology teacher in Ukraine and offered to help

teach an online collaborative lesson about genetics and the laws of inheritance. The lesson involved using an

innovative computer simulation called the Collaborative Rabbit Genetics Lab. The learning materials were

translated into Ukrainian. A quasi-experimental research design compared whether prior experience working

with a collaborative seesaw simulation would influence outcomes later with the biology-related collaborative

simulation. Data from two classes of 9th-grade students were collected using questionnaire items related to

the perception of interdependence, an open-ended question about collaboration, and a focus group interview.

The results indicate that prior practice with a collaborative simulation somewhat enhanced perceived

collaboration the next time students worked with a similar type of interdependent task but did not affect task

performance. The findings suggest that more guidance is needed to support learners in online collaboration

when they solve interdependent tasks.

1 INTRODUCTION

A major concern of teachers during the Covid-19

pandemic and the resulting lockdown of schools was

maintaining social contact with students during a time

of mandatory physical distancing (König et al., 2020).

Even when teachers began to use video conferencing

platforms for online lessons, many science teachers

reported that engaging students in collaborative

learning activities was a serious challenge (Rannastu-

Avalos and Siiman, 2020). It has been argued that

successful online learning requires establishing and

maintaining a condition of social presence, that is, the

ability of learners to project themselves socially and

affectively into a community (Garrison et al., 2000).

The Covid-19 pandemic experience suggests that, in

general, school teachers require more guidance and

support to promote online social interaction

effectively.

The Covid-19 pandemic began in March 2020 and

led to worldwide quarantine and physical distancing

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6429-515X

measures. Thanks to the success of mass vaccination

programmes, travel restrictions have been lifted in

most countries. However, on the morning of 24

February 2022, another event captured worldwide

attention. On that day the Russian Federation invaded

its neighbour Ukraine. Immediately, all educational

institutions were closed in Ukraine, but slowly began

to reopen online in mid-March for secondary school

students and in April for university students (Lavrysh

et al., 2022). By that time, millions of Ukrainian

refugees, mostly women and children, had left the

country in what has become the largest refugee crisis

of the 21st century (UNHCR, 2022).

Many European countries have shown an

extraordinary outpouring of support for the Ukrainian

people. Since the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian

government has been looking for and supporting

initiatives for the digitalisation of education

(Zinchenko et al., 2022). The government of Estonia

has successfully developed many digital solutions for

public services and recently signed a cooperation

Siiman, L. and Halchevska, Y.

An Online Collaborative Biology Simulation Used by Ukrainian Students During the 2022 Russian Invasion.

DOI: 10.5220/0011847300003470

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2023) - Volume 2, pages 503-510

ISBN: 978-989-758-641-5; ISSN: 2184-5026

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

503

agreement with Ukraine to promote a vision of digital

transformation focusing on cybersecurity and e-

governance (Ministry of Economic Affairs and

Communications, 2022). Universities in Estonia have

been active in promoting the digitalisation of

education. The University of Tartu has offered since

2017 a mostly online master’s degree programme in

educational technology taught in English

. A few

Ukrainians have completed it and in 2022 one

Ukrainian student in the programme, the second

author (Y.H.), chose as her thesis topic collaboration

with educational technologies under the supervision

of the first author (L.A.S). After the Russian invasion

of Ukraine, she decided to plan an online activity with

Ukrainian school-age students.

Supporting online collaboration requires learning

activities that prompt various collaborative

behaviours in students and monitoring their

behaviour to provide feedback when necessary. The

Programme for International Student Assessment

(PISA) developed three general competencies to

categorise collaborative behaviours expected of

school-age students for the 2015 large-scale

assessment of students’ collaborative problem-

solving skills. The three collaborative problem-

solving competencies are (OECD, 2017):

▪ Establishing and maintaining shared

understanding (e.g., discovering the unique

knowledge and perspectives of group

members);

▪ Taking action to solve the problem (e.g.,

identifying and describing subtasks);

▪ Keeping the team organised (e.g., describing

roles and providing feedback on member

contributions).

The PISA assessment used different types of

collaborative problem-solving tasks to prompt

collaborative behaviours, one of which was the

jigsaw or hidden-profile task. In this type of task, each

group member is given different information, and

success with the task depends on pooling together

each member’s unique information (Aronson et al.,

1978; Stasser and Titus, 1985). No single individual

can solve this type of task on his or her own because

each collaborator has a unique and necessary part of

the information, and like solving a jigsaw puzzle,

must put the parts together before a solution is found

(i.e., seeing the bigger picture of the puzzle).

Another assessment of students’ collaborative

problem-solving skills was developed by the

Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills

https://ut.ee/en/curriculum/educational-technology

https://leosiiman.neocities.org/simulations.html

(ATC21S) project (Griffin and Care, 2015). The tasks

developed by ATC21S also required establishing a

condition of interdependence in which no student

could solve the problem alone. The tasks were created

for use online and involved two students working

remotely on separate computers while controlling

different aspects of a shared simulation. The students

could communicate with each other using a chat

messenger app. For example, one task involved a

simulation of a beam balance in which functionality

to place masses on the balance was divided between

the two students: i.e., one student could place masses

only on the left side and the other student only on the

right side of the balance. To explore different

combinations of masses that would still keep the

beam balanced, the two students had to work together

and coordinate their actions.

Based on the ATC21S task design to create

simulations where different collaborators have

differing control over a shared simulation, Siiman et

al. (2020) developed so-called asymmetric

simulations to support collaborative scientific

inquiry. These collaborative simulations were

designed for learning various science topics

(photosynthesis, force and balance, electric circuits,

genetics and laws of inheritance). They are also freely

available on the internet

, can be integrated into an

online digital lesson using the Go-Lab Platform

, and

translatable into different languages. The second

author decided that the Collaborative Rabbit Genetics

Lab

would be a suitable collaborative simulation to

use after contacting a Ukrainian biology teacher. The

teacher mentioned that the students had learnt this

topic, but it would be good to review it in a new and

collaborative manner. Prior research with asymmetric

simulations has suggested that it is challenging for

students the first time they encounter strongly

interdependent tasks (Rannastu et al., 2019). Thus,

the current study aimed to investigate whether

practice with a collaborative simulation task about

balancing a seesaw would influence outcomes on the

later task about rabbit genetics and the laws of

inheritance. We hypothesised that prior experience

solving an interdependent task with collaborative

simulations would benefit students later when they

collaborated again on a similar task but in a different

context.

https://www.golabz.eu

https://www.golabz.eu/lab/collaborative-rabbit-genetics-lab

CSEDU 2023 - 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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2 METHOD

Students aged 14 to 15 from two 9th-grade biology

classes at a public school in Dnipro, Ukraine

participated in this study. The class sizes were 21

(Class 1) and 28 (Class 2), but due to the ongoing war

in Ukraine, only 19 students fully participated. They

were either in Dnipro or on the outskirts and close to

the city. In case of an air raid siren in the city, the

lesson would have to stop immediately, but

fortunately for the three sessions in this study, no air

sirens rang. A quasi-experimental design was applied,

and Class 1 was assigned to the condition of gaining

prior experience with an interdependent simulation

before completing the main task. The sessions with

the students were held online using the Zoom video

conferencing software and led by the educational

technology master’s student (author Y.H.) in mid-

April 2022. Each intervention lasted 40 minutes.

Students in both classes were randomly assigned to

work in pairs. One group in Class 2 worked as a group

of three.

2.1 Materials

2.1.1 Asymmetric Collaborative Simulations

Two asymmetric collaborative simulations were used

in this study. The main simulation, the Collaborative

Rabbit Genetics Lab (see Figure 1), involves a

simulation where in version A, a student can select

black rabbits to be placed in the “Parents” area for

breeding offspring. In Version B, a student has

similar functionality over white rabbits. The

simulation reacts in real-time simultaneously to

changes made by either student as long as the room

number which students entered to join the simulation

is the same. Initially, both black and white rabbits

have a homozygous trait for fur colour. However, if

the two students collaborate, it is possible to discover

that two black rabbits can produce a white offspring.

To do so, it is necessary to generate a second

generation of black rabbits bred with white rabbits so

that the offspring will have a heterozygous trait for

Figure 1: Screenshots of the Collaborative Rabbit Genetics Lab: Version A (Top row) and Version B (Bottom row). The

sequence of images from left to right show potential actions students might take in the simulation.

An Online Collaborative Biology Simulation Used by Ukrainian Students During the 2022 Russian Invasion

505

Figure 2: Screenshots of the Collaborative Seesaw Lab:

Version A (Top) and Version B (Bottom). It was used with

the group of students (Class 1) who received prior

experience using a collaborative simulation before working

with the rabbit genetics simulation.

fur colour. Then each student saves one of these black

offspring into a box provided in the simulation.

Finally, when the students reset the simulation so that

new parents can be selected, they select the two

heterozygous black rabbits they saved and discover

that some offspring may now be white in colour.

Besides the main collaborative simulation, we

used the Collaborative Seesaw Lab (see Figure 2)

with Class 1 to provide them with prior experience

solving an online interdependent task. This

simulation involves a seesaw where users can place

masses only on the left side (Version A) or only on

the right side (Version B) of the seesaw. Students do

not see the masses or positions of masses on the

opposite side. They can only see whether the seesaw

is tilted or balanced. A box provided in the simulation

allows the students to share masses back and forth

with each other. Initially, all of the masses are

provided in Version A of the simulation.

2.1.2 The Go-Lab Learning Environment

To collect data and easily translate the learning

materials into Ukrainian, we used the Go-Lab

learning environment (T. De Jong, Soteriou, and

Gillet, 2014). In Go-Lab (https://www.golabz.eu), we

could embed the simulations and collect responses

from students to the task questions. Figure 3 shows

how the collaborative rabbit genetics task appeared in

the Go-Lab learning environment.

Figure 3: Screenshot of version B of the collaborative rabbit genetics activity after translation into Ukrainian as it appeared

in the Go-Lab learning environment on a desktop or laptop computer screen. Note the chat messenger to the right.

CSEDU 2023 - 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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In the main task involving rabbit genetics, we asked

three questions:

▪ Q1. Name all the dependent (Version A) /

independent (Version B) variables in this

computer simulation.

▪ Q2. In this computer simulation, it is possible for

black rabbits to give birth to a white offspring.

Discover how to do this and then explain how.

▪ Q3. Explain what characteristics two white

(Version A) / black (Version B) rabbits in this

simulation should have so that there is an equal

probability (50%) of giving birth to an

offspring with floppy ears or an offspring with

straight ears.

The first question was scored correct if students

identified fur colour of the offspring as the dependent

variable and parent fur colour or genotype as the

dependent variable. The second question was scored

correct if students discovered that the parents they

have initial access to have dominant (genotype = AA)

or recessive (genotype = aa) fur colour traits, whereas

it is necessary to mate two heterozygous black rabbits

(genotype = Aa) in order to have the possibility of

having a white offspring. The third question was

scored correct if the students identified that mating a

rabbit with recessive genotype for ear shape

(genotype = bb) and a heterozygous rabbit (genotype

= Bb) would result in a probability of about 50% for

the offspring to have straight ears.

For the seesaw task, which was meant to be

practice for the students in Class 1 to get familiar with

a jigsaw or hidden-profile type of task, we asked only

one question:

▪ Can the seesaw be balanced using a total of 3

objects (Version A) / 2 objects (Version B) on

the seesaw? If so, then describe exactly how.

Note that questions were not always the same for both

students. This was done deliberately so that students

would have to clearly communicate what the goals of

their collaboration should be.

The way students could communicate in Go-Lab

was via a chat messenger app and the sending of text

messages. This mode of communication follows the

example of collaborative problem-solving tasks

presenting a history of everything that has been

written. However, it is usually slower than oral

communication and lacks the subtle opportunities to

convey emotions using non-verbal signals.

2.2 Measures

Both task performance and collaboration were

assessed in this study. The main task involving rabbit

genetics consisted of the three questions mentioned

above that could be objectively graded. To measure

students’ collaboration, several indicators were used.

Table 1 shows five survey items related to

interdependence that were asked of students after they

had completed the rabbit genetics task. The

collaborative simulation was designed to instil a

condition of interdependence between the two

students and therefore perception of interdependence

was judged to be important for this collaborative

activity.

Table 1: Survey items.

Item

Statement or question

My partner was dependent on me for

information and advice.

I was dependent on my partner for information

and advice.

We agreed on what we wanted to achieve.

When my partner succeeded, this had a positive

impact on me.

What do you think is most important for

successful collaboration?

Note. Items Q1 to Q4 were responded to on a Likert scale with

the options: 1 = Strongly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Neutral, 4

= Agree, 5 = Strongly agree. Items 5 was open-ended question.

Two items measuring perceived task

interdependence (Q1 & Q2) and two items measuring

outcome interdependence (Q3 & Q4) were adapted

from the the Team Learning Beliefs & Behaviors

Questionnaire (Van den Bossche et al., 2006). An

open-ended question (Q5) was used as the fifth

survey item to allow students to answer in their own

words what is most important for successful

collaboration.

A focus group interview with each class

separately was also used to gather data about the

intervention. It was guided by the question: “What

did you learn from this collaborative experience?”.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 2 presents the performance results of the

collaborative rabbit genetics task for both classes.

This performance score is the result of grading the

three questions for this task (e.g., Q1. Identify the

dependent/independent variables in this simulation).

As can be seen, both classes performed poorly

answering the task questions, with responses to the

third question barely receiving any credit.

An Online Collaborative Biology Simulation Used by Ukrainian Students During the 2022 Russian Invasion

507

Table 2: Average performance scores (in percentage) for

the three questions on the collaborative rabbit genetics task.

Question

Class 1 (n=10)

Class 2 (n=9)

The post-task focus group interview offers

possible reasons for the poor task performance. A

lack of time to solve all three questions was expressed

by students in both classes. But perhaps more

importantly, the inconvenience of communicating

continuously with a chat messenger app may have

slowed down progress. In the interview, one student

said, “I was using Telegram … because it is more

comfortable for me to focus on the task.” Then

another student said “I also used Telegram because

me and my partner were using voice messages to save

some time. Well, it is faster to say something rather

than type it.” Telegram is a social media app for

instant messaging, voice, and video messaging that is

popular in Ukraine. A third student summed up the

general opinion by saying, “If we had a chance to

speak to each other it would save us time.” The

additional time needed to communicate with a chat

messenger may explain why many students did not

perform well on the third task question. In addition to

a lack of time, students commented that the task was

challenging: “It took some time to try it out, to try to

move the rabbits around … to listen to [the]

explanation of the lesson and to register … it was

challenging”, “the task with rabbits is more

complicated than the seesaw one”.

Table 3 shows means and standard deviation

values from the survey items measuring perceived

interdependence. Compared to Class 2, the students

in Class 1 reported higher perceived interdependence

on all four of the items, but only item Q1 was found

to be statistically significant.

The generally positive responses towards

perception of interdependence with the collaborative

rabbit genetics task was echoed in the focus group

interview. Students said, “I learned how to work in

Table 3: Mean and standard deviation values (in

parentheses) for survey items Q1 to Q4.

Item

Class 1 (n=10)

Class 2 (n=9)

3.8 (0.8)

2.7 (1.3)

3.9 (1.1)

3.1 (1.4)

3.9 (0.9)

3.3 (1.7)

4.4 (0.7)

3.9 (0.8)

p < .05. Two-sample independent t-test.

Table 4 shows student responses to the survey

question Q5: “What do you think is most important

for successful collaboration?”. The responses to item

Q5 show that many students perceive successful

collaboration to be the result of effective

communication and understanding. The collaborative

rabbit genetics task certainly presented them with a

type of problem where effective communication was

essential for success. According to the three

dimensions unique to collaborative problem-solving

in the PISA framework, effective communication as

expressed by the students could be best categorised

under the dimension Establishing and maintaining

shared understanding. The PISA dimension Taking

action to solve the problem was expressed by students

Table 4: Responses by students to survey item Q5: “What

do you think is most important for successful

collaboration?”.

No.

Class 1 (n=10)

Class 2 (n=9)

A friendly way of talk,

and to be a good

listener, and to

understand the question

we work on.

Quickly find

solutions to

questions, the ability

to hear different

points of view.

Both people need to

listen, understand the

topic and look for the

answers quickly.

They listen to each

other and

understand why they

want from us.

We need to save time in

order to finish the

cooperation quickly.

Friendship forever

like in fairy tales,

team spirit.

To communicate with

each other and respect

each other.

Ability to listen,

understand and

implement.

To communicate and

keep the friendly way of

talk.

Team spirit and

willingness to work.

To communicate in a

way so that we save

time.

The ability to

negotiate quickly.

Friendly way of talk and

quick respond.

An easy transfer of

information.

To discuss and

communicate.

Communication.

To listen to my partner.

Friendship.

Understanding quickly.

in statements like “Quickly find solutions to

questions”, “look for the answers quickly”. The third

dimension, Keeping the team organised, was

expressed by students in the sense of acting friendly.

They said, “keep the friendly way of talk”,

“friendship”, “team spirit”. Thus, all three

dimensions were partly expressed by students in their

short answer responses to what they think is most

important for successful collaboration.

Looking again at the task assignment, we realise

that guidance for certain parts would have alleviated

CSEDU 2023 - 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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the time pressure students felt. Lazonder and

Harmsen (2016), in a comprehensive meta-analysis,

found that guidance is pivotal to successful inquiry-

based learning. For the first question on the

collaborative rabbit genetics task, we could have

prompted students with text such as Make sure to

work collaboratively since your collaborator may

have information in their simulation that you are

missing. Students do not expect to have missing or

different information on collaborative tasks. In fact,

during the interview, one student said, “We were

surprised when … our questions for the [task] were

different … usually it happens when there’s a typo, so

we tell this to our teachers. But I understand now that

it is meant to be like that.” When under time

constraints, then providing guidance for students to

quickly realise that information is missing or different

seems reasonable. Additional guidance could lower

the complexity of the task by providing hints about

how to perform a certain action or scaffolds to explain

more demanding parts of an action.

In this study we measured collaboration using

self-report data from students. Future research should

explore ways of combining such data with other

indicators of collaboration, such as process data, to

get a richer picture of the multiple interacting

elements involved in collaboration. Triangulating

analysis approaches may offer improved validity

when assessing the collaborative problem-solving

construct (Pöysä-Tarhonen et al., 2022). Ultimately,

a practical assessment instrument for teachers should

be developed so that students’ collaboration skills can

be measured and appropriate feedback given about

the strengths and weaknesses of their collaboration

skills.

Collaboration is a complex construct that is not

easily operationalised. Ercikan and Oliveri (2016)

make a case for going beyond traditional

psychometric analyses of assessment instruments and

looking closely at the behaviour and thinking of

subjects during real-life learning contexts. This study

investigated online student collaboration during a

difficult time for the Ukrainian participants.

Nevertheless, the students expressed positive aspects

when describing successful collaboration and offered

constructive remarks for improving this activity.

Their responses to the survey item “What do you

think is most important for successful collaboration?”

mentioned friendship several times and showed their

awareness of dealing with people in a friendly way to

get along better. The context of this study during the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine makes it unique.

More data from other contexts would help to identify

the potential of online collaborative simulations in

developing students’ collaboration skills and in

suggesting ways of validly assessing those skills.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The aim of this study was for Ukrainian students to

participate in an online collaborative activity and

investigate whether prior experience with a

collaborative simulation benefits students later when

they use a similar simulation again. We found that

students’ collaboration, as measured by perceived

interdependence questionnaire items, was higher for

the prior experience group. However, students’ task

performance did not differ significantly depending on

whether they received prior experience or not, and

was on average poor. A post-task interview revealed

that a barrier to effective communication was

designing the task with a chat messenger app.

Students preferred to communicate orally. In

addition, the biology task related to rabbit genetics

was challenging and would have benefited from

additional guidance for students.

Although interdependent collaborative tasks may

be challenging for students, educators need to support

students in developing collaboration skills to solve

such tasks. The European Digital Competence

Framework for Citizens (Vuorikari et al., 2022)

provides a common understanding of digital

competence and specifically identifies one

competence area as Communication and

Collaboration. Young people need to become

proficient at using digital technologies to solve

complex problems collaboratively. Furthermore,

teachers and educational researchers require

evidence-based guidance to create and use well-

designed digital collaborative activities while

monitoring or measuring the development of

students’ collaboration skills. More evidence is

needed to ensure collaborative activities and tools for

measuring collaboration skills are reliable and valid.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the cooperation and

resilience of the Ukrainian students and their teacher

who participated in this study.

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