Collaboration Tools Have Limitations with Large Numbers of Users

The ASCILITE TELedvisors and Learning Design co-webinar: Learning design for ePortfolios presented some ideas on portfolio pedagogy  and assessment. However, I found the demonstration of the Miro collaborative whiteboard very confusing. This illustrates the problem of real time online collaboration with a large number of people. 

There were about 40 people editing in Miro simultaneously. On my old laptop with a low speed broadband connection what I saw was trippy, but not very informative.

First some jellyfish floated by, while small tropical fish darted about. It turned out the jellyfish were actually a bubble diagram and the fish were the color coded pointers of the people editing. Later some text appeared which eventually lined up with the bubbles. But I still couldn't work out what this was because there were still pointers darting about and the content constantly changing.

It was only when I took a screen shot to write a commentary on this queasy experience that I could see what I was looking at. It was part of a rubric used for assessing student work. The bubbles where to highlight key points for the students, with lines running off to part of the student's assignment (which was not on screen).

My impression was this was a tool which might work with a small group of a half dozen people, if they had suitably speedy Internet. But I don't know how you would handle accessibility of the freehand drawing for people who can't see the lines.

I have taken part in group activities using document collaboration tools. These cope with a slow link better, as they don't have to transmit hand drawn images. However, with more than a half dozen people editing, it still gets very confusing. Pointers fly around and text appears, disappears and moves in front of your eyes. But with a small number of people it can be very productive. Communicating by audio it is like a multiplayer game: "Okay I am going to tackle the introduction, while you kill that second table...". ;-)

However, as I found, a group collaboration where your technology, or your understanding can't keep up can be intensely frustrating. This is especially the case with students online, who can't simply put up their had to ask a tutor what they should be doing. As a student I had that experience for much of my three years studying online for a graduate degree. For an inexperienced student, this can induce dangerous levels of stress.

Four Steps to Digital Teaching

Pictographs by
Carlos Sarmento
from the Noun Project
(CC BY 3.0 US).

To help with the change in teaching techniques at ANU, I have set out Four Steps to Digital Teaching. These are illustrated on the cover of my book "Digital Teaching In Higher Education". The idea is to provide some quick and easy to understand steps to help academics to adapt existing courses and materials, not to turn them into educational designers or technology specialists. My approach, the educational jargon, is constructivist, collaborative and experiential.

1. eBooks: Provide ebooks and other curated content on the topic. Finding what they should read, and do, when can be confusing for a student. The course materials should be laid out like a book, with a table of contents, providing an overview, the course materials and activities in the order in which the student should undertake them and at the end any additional material. There should be an introduction, and a list of all the assessment the student is to undertake.
   
   The electronic format used for the course materials and the providing it is not so important. However, using many different systems and formats can be confusing for the student.
2. 
   Discussion: Facilitate discussion between the students. Discussion is not only a useful way for the student to learn, but is a valuable graduate skill in itself. At least on asynchronous text based forum should be provided.
   
   Synchronous text, audio and video "webinars" may also be used, but students may not be able to all attend at the same time, so multiple sessions and asynchronous alternatives should be provided.
   
   Students need to be told in advance what the purpose of the discussion is, how they are expected to participate and how the discussion will be assessed. The discussion must be assessed in some way, to provide the student with an incentive to participate and to make it educationally relevant.
3. eTools: Provide tools and techniques for the student to explore the topic. The basic tools used for a course will be the provision of reading materials, discussion questions and a forum to answer the questions in.
   
   Quizzes may be provided to help students with surface knowledge. There may be more specialized tools which emulate those of the discipline on-line or are actual on-line tools.
4. Assessment, including formative feedback, to help them learn. Whenever a student is asked to do something, there should be some form of assessment to check how well they did it.
   
   For a standard twelve week course, there should be some form of assessment at least every week, making up about one to two percent of the total assessment per week. To improve learning and reduce the instructor burden, most of this assessment can be automated quizzes and peer assessment. The assessment scheme can be set so that this progressive assessment does not count for high grades (above a "Credit").
   
   Assessment is stressful for the student and time consuming for the instructor. Stress and time can be reduced by using rubrics, to clearly set out what is required. Also firm deadlines with no extensions can help reduce stress and time: student then know when assessment is due and that missed deadlines result in zero marks. To make this less stressful small progressive assessment items can be on a "best of" basis, such as the best ten out of twelve weeks being counted.