Supporting Collaborative Project-Based Learning onthe WWW

Douglas R. WardEsther L. Tiessen

MC2 Learning Systems Inc.Simon Fraser University

AbstractZebu is an educational groupware technologywhich facilitates the use of standard WWWsoftware to support collaborative project-basedlearning. This paper discusses the promise ofZebu in helping teachers and students overcomesome technical and practical, educationalproblems inherent in WWW-based technologies,allowing them to more fully realise thepotentials of the WWW as a technology forcollaboration in education. Illustrations of thesoftware are included to provide further detail ofhow the software addresses these problems.

Keywords—educational groupware,collaborative learning strategies, design andinterface issues, tools to support teaching incollaborative settings, WWW

IntroductionThe WWW (World-Wide Web) has an enormous,yet largely untapped potential for supportingcollaborative learning within and betweenschools. The original intent of the WWW was tosupport the constructive, collaborative work ofacademics and other knowledge workers (Berners-Lee, Cailliau, Luotonen, Nielsen & Secret,1994) , yet in typical use, the WWW is found tobe a rather passive communication medium. Thisorientation is unfortunate because it limits theeveryday usefulness of the WWW for supportingcollaborative educational activities. The biastoward non-constructive activities with WWWtechnologies can be explained in part by thenature of the tools which are commonly availablefor working with the WWW as a medium ofcommunication—browsers are more common andsimpler to use than editors. It has been a majorgoal of the ALiVE! Project (Active Learning inVirtual Environments) to design and build tools

which make it easily possible to turn the WWWinto a constructive medium which can be used byteachers and students to engage in collaborativeproject-based learning activities (Tiessen, 1996;Ward, 1996; Ward & Tiessen, 1997) .

Collaborative project-based learning is aninstructional approach that attempts to engagestudents in the intentional pursuit of their ownlearning goals and in social interactions aimedtoward the development of understanding. Thisapproach draws from a variety of educationaltheories and instructional practices includingcollaborative learning (Brown, 1990; Kaye,1992), active learning (Bork, 1992; Rakes,1996), intentional learning (Scardamalia &Bereiter, 1985; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1993;Scardamalia, Bereiter, McLean, Swallow &Woodruff, 1989), distributed expertise (Brown,1994; Brown et al., 1993), resource-basedlearning (Brown & Smith, 1996; Lisewski &Settle, 1996; Race, 1996; Rakes, 1996; Taylor& Laurillard, 1995, and project-based instruction(Honebein, Duffy & Fishman, 1993) . In thisapproach, student research is a primary activity,and considerable effort is directed toward finding,collecting, and organizing information fromvarious sources (Taylor & Laurillard, 1995).Students add intellectual value to existinginformation as they construct and manipulaterepresentations of their own knowledge in pursuitof their learning goals. Teachers providescaffolding to support and constrain studentsactivities to those which are likely to beeducationally profitable. Students shareinformation, and communicate to coordinateactivities and to collaborate in buildingcommunal knowledge products, as they takeindividual and group responsibilities in theirprojects. For the WWW to be a medium whichdirectly supports these educationally desirablecharacteristics, new software tools are needed.

This paper briefly discusses some educationalpotentials of the WWW, problems with currentWWW-based technologies, and promisingsolutions in the design of a new educationalgroupware environment called “Zebu.”

Educational Potentials of theWWWVast multimedia information resources areavailable to teachers and students via the WWW.Despite the common difficulties in findinguseful, appropriate information, the WWW is arich information environment for teachers’ andstudents’ research activities (Rakes, 1996) . Dueto this richness, there is considerable enthusiasmfor bringing the WWW into classrooms byproviding Internet connections so students cansearch and download information in their researchactivities. The WWW is seen as a valuableresource for locating up-to-date, authentic,primary information, whose potential forsupporting student research extends far beyondthe capabilities of the typical school library(Rakes, 1996; Trentin, 1996) .

In support of constructivist approaches,students can derive considerable value from thecreation and sharing of representations of theirown knowledge (Bellamy, 1996; Duin &Hansen, 1994; Trentin, 1996) , and the WWWprovides a medium for students to publish andshare documents with their peers. As studentsbecome authors, not mere surfers, the WWW canbecome a medium in which collaborative projectscan be constructed and shared within or betweengroups of students who share the same learninggoals, regardless of their physical locations.

Bringing the classroom into the WWW is asimportant as bringing the WWW into theclassroom. As students become publishers, theirown contributions to the WWW can becomeuseful resources for the constructive work ofthemselves and others. In this way, students canbegin to engage in the progressive processes ofknowledge building (Bellamy, 1996; Duin &Hansen, 1994) . As well as engaging students inauthentic constructive activities, this has thepotential to transform students’ conceptions ofthe nature and value of knowledge andinformation itself. As students contribute to theworld’s information resources, it becomesdifficult to maintain views of publishedinformation as authoritative and necessarily true,so students can come to be more critical (Rakes,1996) , and view knowledge construction as asocial process.

Problems in Realising thePotentialsThese potentials are not easy to realise inimplementing a collaborative project-basedlearning approach. This section discusses thetechnical problems in using the WWW, as wellas the educational problems in supporting theinstructional approach. These “problems” areviewed as challenges for the design of bettertechnologies, not as insurmountable obstacles toachieving the educational potentials.

Technical Challenges

Managing information resourcesThe management of WWW-based informationresources presents difficulties for most WWWusers, particularly in research activities (Rakes,1996) . Search engines are improving, butfinding useful information can often be difficult(Linn, 1996; Starr & Milheim, 1996), evenwhen one knows exactly what to look for.Organizing and keeping track of foundinformation is aided by a variety of “bookmark”manager programs, but these programs tend to beoriented toward an individual rather than a sharedenvironment.

Production toolsConsiderable technical overhead is involved inthe production and publication of WWWdocuments. Since the introduction of WYSIWYGpage editors, knowledge of HTML per se is nolonger required, but such editors are not trivial tolearn, particularly if any advanced multimedia orinteractivity is to be included. As well, FTP orsome other file transfer mechanism is alsotypically required to move documents from theuser’s computer to a WWW site for publication.The technologies for constructing documents tendnot to be tightly integrated with those forcommunication, thus collaboration is difficult.

Site managementThe organization and management of WWW sitesalso imposes considerable technical overhead. Alarge collection of categorized “pages” can be aformidable thing to manage for an experiencedadult, let alone a young child. This problem isfurther amplified by a requirement to have groupsof students work together, or perhaps have anentire school sharing a single WWW site. Aswell, there are trade-offs between security andpublication of students’ work both within sitesand in the open WWW. It is possible to providesafe, private spaces for students to work on theirideas individually or in groups, but it is also

necessary to balance this with the need to shareand publish their ideas at some point.

In general, although software for all aspectsof WWW publication is becoming simpler andmore powerful, most existing software requiresthe investment of significant cognitive overheadin focusing on the WWW technologies ratherthan the educational work of knowledgeproduction.

Educational Challenges

Adding intellectual value toinformationWhereas many educators agree that students mustengage in personally meaningful activities whichhelp them construct their own knowledge, muchof schooling continues to have students focus ongetting correct information from authoritativesources. To have students focus on addingintellectual value to existing information requiresa substantial and often difficult reorientation ofstudents’ ideas about learning and the process ofeducation. Conceptions of the WWW as a placeto get information must be complemented withconceptions of it as a place to create and sharenew ideas for it to be a collaborative educationalenvironment.

Scaffolding student workEven students with explicit learning goals canwaste considerable time and effort in notknowing what to do or how to proceed withaspects of their knowledge work. Providing somedegree of scaffolding is a necessary part of ateacher’s role in supporting and constrainingstudents’ efforts so that they can more easilyfocus on educationally profitable activities. Inpractice there is a difficult balance betweenproviding sufficient support and maintaining theoption for students to take charge of their ownknowledge work. It is part of the art of teachingto determine how much and what form ofscaffolding to provide, but it is clear that teachersneed to be able to participate by providingsupports within the medium in which studentsare doing their work.

Coordinating student workFor groups of students to effectively worktogether on different but related parts of a project,a great deal of coordination can be required.Teachers need to have simple ways to createsupports for particular participant structures forstudent activities, so as to reduce theorganizational overhead of coordinating groupactivities. As with other forms of scaffolding, atrade-off exists between the sufficiency and

flexibility of such structural support, but thesupports would likely be most effective ifembedded within the medium of students’knowledge work.

Supporting collaborationCollaboration requires a shared workspace whereparticipants have equal access to building andmanipulating shared representations (Schrage,1990) . Communication environments, wherestudents can exchange information about whatthey know, are becoming more common, but itis a significant challenge to support educationalcollaboration by providing a softwareenvironment for the WWW that serves as a fluidmedium for the group construction of knowledge.

Solutions in a New MediumThe problems described in the previous sectionserve as challenges for the design of newcollaborative technologies for education ingeneral. These challenges have guided the designof a WWW-based educational groupwareenvironment (Zebu) in the ALiVE! Project forthe last two years. This section describes aspectsof Zebu that address these design challenges, andaspects where further improvements are needed.

Zebu is a web-based groupware systemdesigned specifically for education. Technically,the software is a set of CGI enhancements to astandard HTTP server, which allows users toconstruct and edit pages and other objects withina secure WWW site. Since the software is server-based, users only need a standard browser to viewand edit site contents. More recent versionsinclude simple Java interfaces for editing pagecontents. The site is organized into Projects andProject Collections which can be createddynamically by site administrators (typicallyteachers). Projects are collections of Pages,Templates, and Reference Collections. Pages arecollections of Objects which may have one ofeight different media types (text, graphic, video,sound, HTML, link, reference link, ordiscussion), and can have editable content andformatting. Templates can be cloned to createnew pages with initial content and structure.Reference Collections function like bookmarkfiles, and can be embedded into pages andtemplates. There are also Galleries for storing andorganizing multimedia components. Thesecomponents may be used directly in pages ortemplates, and users may upload new items intogalleries directly from their local disks. There arealso simple administrative tools for creating Useraccounts, Groups of users, Projects (andassigning Users and Groups to Projects), ProjectCollections, and Galleries. The interfaces for

working within a Zebu site are intended to besimple, and provide a conceptual model thatcorresponds to what teachers and students need tothink about in order to engage in collaborativeproject-based learning, rather than focusing onthe WWW technologies that are enabling theirwork.

The sections below describe in further detailthe ways in which these aspects of the interfaceaddress the technical and educational challengesdiscussed above. As well, the figures show screenshots of various features of Zebu. The screenshots are taken from a project being worked onby a Grade 12 Geography class in Port Moody,BC. The project was centred around ecologicalcrises. In this initial phase of the project, pairs ofstudents chose an ecological crisis to research andshare with the rest of the class.

Solutions to Technical Problems

Managing information resourcesZebu offers two main facilities for organizing andstoring information resources. Galleries are usedto store multimedia files (graphics, video,sound). They are accessible from anywhere in thesite for uploading and organizing files, and theyare integrated with the editing tools such that itis easy to place a gallery item directly into anobject in a page. This makes it simple for usersto build and share collections of content resourcesfor their collaborative work (see Figure 1).Whereas Galleries store the actual items,Reference Collections store References toresources found elsewhere. References can includeitems on the WWW (accessible by clicking tofollow the URLs), or more traditional items suchas books, articles, videos, etc. References can benamed and annotated, and organized intohierarchical categories within collections.Reference Collections can be linked to withinpages or templates that teachers give to students,or compiled by one or more students and includedin their own pages. Although ReferenceCollections contain no more than standardbookmark files, their benefits are derived fromtheir tight object-oriented integration into thecollaborative environment (see Figure 2).

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Figure 1. Gallery for "Ecological Crises"Project. Note the following: 1. Users can chooseto access any of the Galleries from the pop-upmenu. 2. Galleries contain graphics, sound, orvideo files. 3. The contents of Galleries can beeasily viewed and managed. 4. Items can be addedfrom another Gallery or from the local computer.5. Users can select an item to include in theirpage.

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Figure 2. Reference Collection in "EcologicalCrises" Project. Note the following: 1. Users canchoose to access any of the Reference Collectionsfrom the pop-up menu. 2. References can beannotated and organized into hierarchies.Bookmark files can be imported as a ReferenceCollection. 3. The contents of ReferenceCollections can be easily managed. Webreferences can be opened in a new window.

Production toolsThe primary simplicity of Zebu is derived fromthe non-moded integration of tools forconstructing and sharing representations withexisting tools for browsing. The browserbecomes a window into a manipulableenvironment, with point-and-click remaining asthe primary mode of interaction. For example toopen a project or a page, the user simply clickson an icon. To edit an object within a page, theuser clicks the object’s “edit” button (see Figure3), and is then presented with a window withmedia type-specific options for altering contentand formatting (see Figure 4). Changes to pages,projects, etc., are made directly to the server, sothere is no need to transfer files to the correctdirectories, etc., and the ability to share pages andprojects within work groups is automatic. Thetechnical convergence of the tools for theproduction of representations and forcommunicating and sharing those representationsmakes Zebu a truly collaborative medium. Directmanipulation of objects and contents will be animportant usability improvement for futureversions, but it is already evident that the toolsallow students to focus more directly on theirknowledge work as opposed to focusing on thetools of standard WWW publishing.

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Figure 3. Part of student page in "EcologicalCrises" Project. Note the following: 1. Users canclick the Edit button to edit the contents andattributes of multimedia objects. A dialogue boxwill open for editing the object (see Figure 4). 2.Pages are collections of multimedia objects.These objects can be of different media types(text, graphic, video, sound, link, discussion,HTML, reference link). Each object is outlinedby a box.

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Figure 4. Dialogue for editing contents ofobject. Note the following: 1. Users can changethe media type of the object by selecting anothertype from the pop-up menu. 2. Attributes ofobjects can be locked to prevent further editing.3. Users can edit the media type-specificattributes of the object.

4. Users can edit the content of theobject.Site ManagementTo the extent that site management is required, itis achieved through simple interfaces in thebrowser window. Site administrators can createuser accounts, groups of users, projects, projectcollections, and galleries, and assign privileges tousers or groups for working together on projects(see Figure 5). Users are required to log in to thesite with their name and password, and thesystem provides them access only to the projectsfor which they have been given read or writeprivileges. Once users “enter” a project, the workthat they do there—creating new pages,templates, or reference collections, or editingpages—is automatically stored within theproject, and available to all other participants inthe project (see Figure 6). Users need onlyconsider to which projects their pages belong, orin which gallery an item might be stored, ratherthan negotiating the complex directory structuresof the WWW site. Although site and projectcontents are protected by password access, it issimple to set the access privilege for a project topublish it with read-only access on the openWWW.

Anderson, TonyFinley, AlexGirard, JeanHayes, DanaJones, ChrisLee, KimMcDonald, KellySharp, PatSmith, TerryWong, Jamie

Figure 5. Interface for creating new useraccounts in Zebu.

Figure 6. Table of contents for "EcologicalCrises" project. The table of contents includes allTemplates, Pages, and Reference Collections inthe project. Project contents are automaticallyshared amongst all participants of the project.Pages, Templates, and Reference Collections canbe created, renamed, and deleted from the table ofcontents.

Solutions to Educational Problems

Adding intellectual value toinformationThe availability of constructive, collaborativetools within the familiar WWW browserenvironment facilitates the shift in educationalactivities from simply retrieving and compilinginformation to adding some value to the retrievedinformation in the WWW. Students using Zebuare expected to create their own expressions oftheir own knowledge, by adding intellectual valueto the resources that may be provided to them fortheir project work. It is possible to embed

multimedia items from galleries (or elsewhere onthe WWW) within pages, and to collect andannotate references to interesting informationresources, thereby engaging in sense-making andknowledge-building activities based on existinginformation (see Figure 7). Since their ownrepresentations exist within the sameenvironment as the provided or found informationwhich forms the basis of their inquiries, simplere-presentation of content is obviously of littlevalue, and it is easier for teachers to bias studentstoward deeper levels of processing.

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Figure 7. Part of student page in "EcologicalCrises" Project. Note the following: 1. Links toReference Collections can be embedded in Pagesand Templates. (An example of a ReferenceCollection can be seen in Figure 2). ReferenceCollections are also automatically accessiblefrom the project table of contents, and, hence,shared by all project participants. 2. Thesecollections may be created and edited by studentsor teachers.

Scaffolding student workRather than giving students an empty project orblank page in which to do their constructivework, teachers can provide students with richstarting points for fruitful research and sense-making activity. Facilities for providing accessto initial collections of information resources(Galleries and Reference Collections) aredescribed above (see Figures 1 and 2). The mostdirect facility for scaffolding is the ability tocreate templates for page creation. Zebutemplates are pages which automatically clonethemselves, so that students can start with a pagewhich already contains some content, as well assome structure (see Figure 8). For example, for astudent to learn about a particular process, ateacher might provide a page with a graphic orvideo “placeholder” object for a student to replacewith a graphic or video depicting the process, and

a text object with instructions to write aparagraph explaining how the process works.Within the same template, the teacher couldprovide a link to a collection of references toWWW resources which the student could use astarting points for researching the process to beexplained (see Figure 7). Teachers can also lockobjects (or certain attributes of objects) withintemplates to restrict the sorts of participation thatstudents can engage in (see Figure 4). Differenttemplates can be designed by teachers to providedifferent amounts and kinds of support toindividuals and groups of students who areexpected to work in particular ways in theirproject work. Of course, such scaffolding can fadeas students become more competent on theirown, and students can also use the facility toshape their own activities and interactions witheach other.

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Figure 8. Teacher-created template for workingon understanding of ecological crisis. Thistemplate was used to create the page shown inFigure 3. Note the following: 1. Whereaschanges to Pages are automatically saved on theZebu server, Templates create new Pages forstudents which they need to save. 2. Usingtemplates, teachers are able to provide studentswith a predefined structure that students can useto enter and edit their own content. 3. Templatescan provide both text and multimedia structurefor students.

Coordinating student workIn working together on a project, a lot of effortmight be spent by participants in coordinationissues like where documents should be stored,who should work on which pieces, how to ensureconsistency between contributions, etc. Zebuprovides some simple facilities for thecoordination of student project activities.Through the site administration tools, teacherscan create groups of students, and assign them to

specific projects, such that they can only see oredit content within certain projects (see Figure9). Within the projects, templates can beestablished for use by each participant, or pagescan be created with resources, instructions, andhints on how to make progress. As well,Discussion objects (like small computerconferences) can be embedded within pages forstudents to discuss project coordination issues(see Figure 10). Further planned developmentsinclude associating user privileges with pages andobjects for finer-grained coordination support,tools for creating additional internal structurewithin projects, and teacher planning tools forvisually creating participant and activitystructures for supporting complex or lengthyprojects.

Anderson, TonyFinley, AlexGirard, JeanHayes, DanaJones, ChrisLee, KimMcDonald, KellySharp, PatSmith, TerryWong, Jamie

Girard, JeanJones, ChrisLee, Kim

Figure 9. Interface for adding users to group.

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[1] What efeect does acid rain have on the ozone layer, if any? – Paul –

[2] Where did the rest of the information in this study go – Mary –

[3] I only included the information that I had which I thought was pertinent to this subject – Paul –

[4] Acid rain is harmful ecologically in many respects. It is killing lakes, trees, plant life, and can weaken forests to a state that is vulnerable to disease infestation – Paul –

[5] I read about evidence that acid rain is destroying the creation of rich soils, like an overdose of chemical fertilizer. Does anyone know more about these findings? – Mary –

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Figure 10. Discussion embedded withinstudent page. Note the following: 1. Thediscussion has a problem or issue associated withit. If the discussion is not locked, the problemcan be edited. 2. Each contribution to thediscussion is automatically numbered andappended to the end of the discussion. The authorof each contribution is automatically identified.3. New entries are entered into the text field andappended when the Update Discussion button ispressed.

Supporting collaborationCollaboration is supported in Zebu throughshared creation and editing of pages and projects.Students with privileges to participate together ina project can create pages and edit any of thepages within the project, or any of the objectswithin the pages, thus a project is a shared spacefor the creation of representations.Communication between students is possiblewithin Discussion objects that can be included inany page (see Figure 10). The discussions can bevaluable for supporting discourse betweenstudents about the topics they are studying. InZebu, the environment for constructive discourseis tightly integrated with the tools for resource-based activities.

ConclusionsZebu is an educational groupware technologywhich facilitates the use of standard WWWsoftware for collaborative project-based learning.It shows promise in helping teachers and studentsovercome some technical and practical,educational problems inherent in WWW-basedtechnologies, allowing them to more fully realisethe potentials of the WWW as a technology forcollaboration in education.

Initial testing of a prototype of the Zebusystem was carried out during the previousschool year. Other projects which were conducted

with the prototype included “BookTalk,” aproject for students to share and discuss reviewsof books they had read, a creative writingproject—“Monstres”—carried out by grade 1/2French immersion students, and a joint projectbetween a grade 3/4 and a grade 5/6 class to studytree species and habitats in British Columbia.Currently Zebu is being used at a variety of sitesranging from grade 1 to 12. Use of the Zebusoftware at these sites is being investigated interms of the technical and educational challengesdiscussed above.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank the teachers and studentsat Port Moody Secondary School in Port Moody,BC for their participation in this research. Aswell, we thank the members of the Developmentand Educational Support teams at MC2 LearningSystems for their support of this work. Parts ofthis research were supported by the ScienceCouncil of British Columbia.

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Author’s AddressesDouglas R. Ward & Esther L. TiessenMC2 Learning Systems Inc.8900 Nelson Way, Suite 265Burnaby BC V5A 4W9

School of CommunicationSimon Fraser UniversityBurnaby BC V5A 1S6

dward@sfu.caetiessen@sfu.ca