Evaluating Virtual Collaboration Over Time - A Pilot Field Study

This pilot field study investigated the evaluation of virtual collaboration and of support methods over time asking 32 undergraduates studying pedagogy with a survey questionnaire at three points of time. Results indicate a specific evaluation pattern showing that at all three points of time, taking responsibility was evaluated lowest. Furthermore, correlation analyses showed that the support of designing group work was connected significantly with taking responsibility indicating a positive influence for supporting virtual collaboration. Introduction and Theoretical Background In CSCL research, there is insufficient discussion on learners’ subjective perception of the collaboration process and of support methods. Furthermore, the question is how learner’s evaluation on these two dimensions changes over a period of time. Another issue is to look at the correlations between virtual collaboration and support methods. Therefore, this paper deals with these three issues. Looking at the collaboration process first, main dimensions include the task and the social level of collaboration. The task level involves goal orientation and task completion, the social level group cohesion and taking responsibility (Kauffeld, 2001). The main issue is to see how these dimensions develop in evaluation over time. Second, as virtual collaboration needs support we included two support methods, namely the design of group work (the assignment of roles and group rules), and providing feedback on the performance and worked examples to see, how these means are effective for online collaboration. Third, looking at the theoretical and empirical background, there is no indication on how group members themselves evaluate their collaboration over time and whether there are changes regarding group processes. Furthermore, the development of support on collaboration over a period of time has not yet been investigated. Specifically, the question is whether support is more effective at the beginning than at the end. Research Questions Based on the theoretical background, we investigated three research questions, namely 1. How do students evaluate virtual collaboration and support methods? 2. To what extent do evaluations differ over time? 3. To what extent do the design of group work and feedback correlate with virtual collaboration over time in terms of goal orientation, task completion, cohesion, and taking responsibility?