JOURNAL REVIEW ABOUT:

DO STUDENTS AND LECTURERS ACTIVELY USE COLLABORATION

TOOLS IN LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?

Nastaran ZANJANI, Shaun NYKVIST& Shlomo GEVA

Queensland University of Technology, Australia

*s.nykvist@qut.edu.au

Introduction

As a reader, I find out that this research is a general topic about what exactly are

the collaborative tools that has been used in learning management system (LMS).

It give us ideas about the effectiveness of LMS and whether lectures and students

really used collaborative tools for teaching and learning process. As Endeshaw

(2015) said, learning depends on teaching instructions. So, what is the best method

educator can used to optimize the teaching learning process? Cavus (2007)

research showed a higher success rate when an LMS system is combined with an

advanced collaborative tool during the teaching of programming languages in a

Web-based environment.

Nowadays, students use technology in natural ways that allow them to do

what they want: communicate with anyone they want, in the time and space that

suits them best. Easily accessible and user-friendly, collaboration tools allow

students to explore, share, engage, and connect with people and content in

meaningful ways that help them learn. By relying on the familiar ways students

use these tools, faculty can enable new forms of communication and engagement

in the classroom, permitting extensions and variations of the informal interactions

already occurring in classrooms and hallways, and creating new frontiers for

collaboration across geographic boundaries (Lomas et al., 2008).

Research Area and Research Questions

The researchers main purpose in this study was to investigate how collaboration

tools can be used with Blackboard for teaching and learning process at a major

1

Australian University. This research also explored the factors that influence the

usage of collaboration tools in LMS. Some of the best known commercially

available LMS systems are Blackboard, WebCT, and Desire2Learn. There are also

many open-source and free LMS systems, such as Moodle, Segue, Interact,

CourseWork, Atutor, KEWL and several others (Cavus et. al., 2006). However,

only Blackboard become a focus in this study. Thus, one of the the limitations in

this study is it only can be conducted in a university that used Blackboard for five

years.

Methodology

Both quantitative and qualitative method were used in this study. From the

researcher point of view, this mix-methods is the best approach to find a holistic

view of the problem to be generated and provides in depth analysis about the

research problem. The researcher used open-ended interviews and statistics to give

us better understanding of the research. The participants were informed of the

study through emails sent to each of the faculties and they individually volunteered

and gave full consent to participate in the study.

In this research, the participants (N=67) of the study consisted of both

teaching staff (n=9) and students (n=58) from the faculties of Science and

Technology, Law, Business and Health, all studying at the university where the

study was conducted. Participants who volunteered to be a part of the study were

of varying ages and of mixed sex. Interviews were focused on the way students

and lecturers use the collaboration tools of Blackboard© and were open ended in

nature. The number of participants interviewed was brought to an end once a

saturation point had been reached where no new data was collected from

participants. The researchers demonstrated that saturation often occurs within the

first twelve interviews and that this is sufficient to obtain a reliable conclusion.

The participants interviewed in this study were 67.

In Ballou (2007) research, open-ended interviews gives the subjects more

freedom in crafting an answer but it also increases the cognitive effort. Without

2

answer choices as cues to aid in understanding the question and deciding on an

answer, the subject has to perform additional cognitive tasks before he or she

responds. Thus, it will make the subjects tiring easily. Reja et al. (2003) research

results also shows that open-ended questions produce more missing data than

close-ended. The research also adds that there were more inadequate answers for

open-ended question. My suggestion is when doing the open-ended interviews;

explicit wording should be given so the reliability and trustworthiness of a research

cannot be speculating.

As for the quantitative method, the total participants of the study (N=67)

are a bit low. This research’s result could be question by other researchers because

it cannot be used for generalization even thought the quantitative data are taken

from the Blackboard’s usage record for three years. The focus group from the

faculties of Science and Technology, Law, Business and Health, all studying at the

university where the study was conducted maybe will disturb the credibility of this

research. Terhanian and Bremer (2012) stated in their research that once

particular quota groups have been filled, potential respondents who would

have otherwise qualified for the survey would be turned away. This means,

other students from other faculties can become the potential and more

credibility respondents than the focus group especially if the research only

involving a few participants. However, because of the standard quota

sampling, this kind of respondents may turn away by the researcher.

Findings and Discussion

The mix-methods used in this research give two sources of data, which are

discussed in simple writing. The first source of data is from the interviews. In these

interviews, the researchers find the factors that affect the usage of collaboration

tools and divided it into six main categories; structure and user experience,

availability of time, preference for other tools, lack of knowledge about tools,

pedagogical practice and response time.

3

The first category is about the structure and user experience. In the

discussion, the researchers find that the Blackboard is difficult to use and

redundant procedures or in another term ‘not user-friendly’. To paraphrase Arthur

C. Clarke, good technology should allow individuals to do what they want

naturally. Its use should be driven by the needs of individuals. Ideally, it should

allow users to extend the boundaries of what they are able to achieve and, at the

very least, help people to perform better. In my opinion, the interface of the tool

should be easy and intuitive to navigate, perhaps emulating an existing tool or an

aspect of the physical world. A user’s ability to simply pick up, adapt to, and use

the tool considerably will diminish extensive training and supervision needs thus

boost the uses of the tool.

The second category is availability of time that means participants

indicated they cannot manage the time because of other tasks. The researchers used

one of the statements from the students that stated “I have no time to do this,

because you have to spend a lot of time to understand how to set up them [the

forums]” (S-6) to support their findings. However, in my opinion, this category

should not exist because that statement also can be referring to the first category,

which is the structure and user experience. The third category is preference for

other tools such as Skype and MSN Messenger. As I stated before, collaboration

tools that already exist should be take advantage because it can diminish the

training time. The fourth category is focusing on lack of knowledge about the tools

especially the functions, which limit their knowledge about how beneficial

collaboration tools such as Blackboard for their study.

Nonetheless, the fifth category is the 50% traditional pedagogical practice

of the lecturers that eventually cutback the usage of the collaboration tools. As we

all know, habits are difficult to change so this also become crucial factors in this

study. Lastly, the sixth category is the response time or the length of time the

students had to wait to receive a response. Time consuming discouraged the

students to maximize the uses of the collaboration tools in Blackboard. Hence, this

research only shows us the disadvantageous of the collaboration tools especially

within the Blackboard in LSM.

4

As for the quantitative data, the research only relate the average time that

students in the entire university spent with Blackboard over a three year period

from 2001 until 2012. From the statistical data, the researchers find a decline in the

use of these collaboration tools. In Caves et. al. (2006) research, E-learning

suppose to become new approach for the teaching and learning process because the

participants in LSM are more motivated, self-directed and achieve more than

participants in traditional classrooms.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the researchers stated that mere collaborative tools in LMS such as

Blackboard does not equate as them successfully use in teaching and learning

purposes. In the other hand, they also stated that most educators and students still

not realised the full potential of the collaborative tools in education especially in

this globalisation time. As for this research, I recommend that this research should

be conducted in the entire university by using a survey to make the statistical data

more accurate, more credible and more reliable.

5

REFERENCES

Cavus N. 2007. “Assessing The Success Rate Of Students Using A Learning

System Together With A Collaborative Tool In Web-based Teaching

Of Programming Languages”. Journal Educational Computing

Research, Vol. 36(3) 301-321, 2007.

Cavus N., Uzunboylu H. and Ibrahim D. 2006. “The Effectiveness Of Using

Learning Management Systems And Collaborative Tools in Web-Based

Teaching Of Programming Languages. 3rd

International Symposium and

Education on Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering (ISEECE

2006), 23-25 November, 2006, Near East University, Lefkos ̧a, Cyprus.

Aragaw Delele Endeshaw. The Effect of Cooperative Learning on Students’ Efl

ReadingComprehension: Meshentie Grade Nine High School Students in

Focus. Education Journal. Vol. 4, No. 5, 2015, pp. 222-231.doi:

10.11648/j.edu.20150405.16

Lomas C., Burke M. and Page C. L. 2008. “Collaboration Tools”. ELI Paper 2:

2008.

Reja U., Manfreda K.L., Hlebec V. and Vehovar V. 2003. “Open-ended vs Close-

ended Questions In Web Questionnaires”. Developments in Applied

Statistics. Anuška Ferligoj and Andrej Mrvar (Editors) Metodološki

zvezki,

Terhanian G. and Bremer J. 2012. “A Smarter Way to Select Respondents For

Surveys?”. International Journal of Market Research Vol. 54 Issue 6.

Yanfang Wei, Yaohui Wu, Zheng Zheng. The Application of Sakai in University

of Science and Engineering. Education Journal. Vol. 3, No. 4, 2014, pp.

224-228. doi10.11648/j.edu. 20140304.13

6

APPENDIX A

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14