environments for collaborative group work

WWW-Based environments forcollaborative group work

BETTY COLLIS

Faculty of Educational Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede,The NetherlandsE-mail: [email protected]

Since 1994, we have been involved in the design and use of a series of WWW-based environments to support collaborative group work for students in a techni-cal university in The Netherlands. These environments, and the course re-designthat accompanies each new environment, began in April 1994 and continue to thepresent (March 1998). What are the major issues emerging from this stream of ex-periences? What are the major lessons we have learned about the design and de-ployment of WWW-based environments to support collaborative learning inproject groups in higher education? How has HCI (human-computer interaction)research informed our work? These questions will be addressed in this paper.One conclusion is that HCI research needs to become more focused on supportingHHD (human-human dialogue) than on human-computer interaction in order tobetter support collaborative learning in higher education. # 1998 IFIP, published by

Kluwer Academic Publishers

KEYWORDS: Higher education; collaborative learning; HCI.

INTRODUCTION: COLLABORATIVE GROUP WORK IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Group-based project work is a form of instructional organization in higher educa-tion with a long history. Project work is advocated for its professional or vocationalvalue, as a way to embody experience within a social-constructivist process, and asan instructional strategy for problem-solving development (Van Oort and Van Wier-den, 1996). Group-based project work is a frequently used instructional strategy indomains where design work and problem-solving tasks involving complex systemsare objects of study in themselves (see, for example, Klemm and Snell, 1996, whodiscuss the value of group-based project work in areas including public health andneuroscience, and Van Oort and Van Woerden, 1996, for engineering education).Group-based project work allows the tackling of a complex task, too complex forone person to handle alone, and also provides learning experiences in group inter-

Education and Information Technologies 3 231±245 (1998)

1360±2357 # 1998 IFIP, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers

action, giving authentic opportunities for students to articulate and defend theirideas and to reach consensus on decisions as well as on work-¯ow management(Guzdial et al., 1996). Group-based project work by de®nition involves collaborationamong the members of the group, and thus in the context of higher educationinvolves collaborative learning.

Variables that in¯uence the success of the collaboration involved in group-basedproject work in higher education have been studied extensively (see for example,Collis and Smith, 1997; Slavin, 1990; Van Oort & Van Woerden, 1996). Major variableclusters relate to the effectiveness and ef®ciency of communication among groupmembers and between group members and the instructor, to issues relating to howwell the group deals with its own resource-handling and knowledge-managementtasks, to how well the group functions interpersonally, and to how effectively theproject work itself is integrated with the rest of the course in which the project isembedded (Collis and Smith, 1997). In particular, the following clusters of problemsneed to be managed by both the instructor and the group members themselveswhen group-based project work is used as a form of instructional organization in acourse (Collis, Andrenach and Van Diepen, 1996; Van Oort and Van Woerden, 1996):

· Problems in maintaining course cohesion and momentum as students becomeimmersed in their respective projects

· Problems in motivating and structuring collaboration· Problems in motivating and structuring communication· Problems in maintaining a `group memory'· Problems in organizing and executing self- and intergroup evaluation· Problems in relating group activities and product outcomes to conceptual

aspects of the course, study materials, and individual assessment in examina-tions

We believe that a combination of appropriate instructional strategies and WWW-based tools can help address these problems. In the remainder of this paper, welook at various examples from our own courses of such combinations. As the use ofWWW-based tools involves human-computer interaction (HCI), we also look to theHCI research for guidance in the design of such tools.

Instructional strategies and WWW-based tools used in response to problems with

group-based project work

In our experiences with group-based project work in higher education over a num-ber of years, and our experiences since March 1994 with the use of WWW-basedtools and environments to support such work (see Bos, Morgan and Kikstra, 1996;Collis, 1996, 1997a, b; Collis, Andrenach and Van Diepen, 1996; Collis and Breman,1997; Collis and Meeuwsen, 1997; Van Diepen and Pouw, 1995; Van der Veen, Collisand Jones, 1998), we have evolved various combinations of instructional strategiesand WWW-based tools in response to these general clusters of problems. Table 1shows some of these:

232 Collis

Table 1. Problems in group-based project work, instructional strategies, and WWW-based support

Persistent problems ingroup-based project work

Instructional strategies and WWW-based support inresponse to the problems

Problems in maintainingcourse cohesion andmomentum as studentsbecome immersed in theirrespective projects

Integration of all aspects of the course, theoretical andproject-related, in a single course Web site, accessibleto all and making group progress visible to all

Link of student work, in partial or completed form, tothe course site, for use as examples and study materialfor self study as for demonstration and commentduring lectures

Problems in motivating andstructuring collaboration

Choose a task where the common product ismotivating in itself; where a team approach is neededto handle the various aspects of the task; and where aninstructional strategy such as the Jigsaw Methodology,(whereby each group member has clearly de®ned andseparate contributions to the group, Aronson, et al.,1978) is built into course requirements

Problems in motivating andstructuring communication

Develop a strategy of having a manger in each groupresponsible for reporting group progress and groupre¯ection, via embedded e-mail, newsgroups, CGIforms, and other tools, available in the course Website, and with results of this input linked into thecourse site so that a group archive is built from thecommunication

Problems in maintaining a`group memory'

Use tools with shared-workspace functionalitiesintegrated in the course Web site so that a commonview of notes, partial products and other project-management related information is available to all

Problems in organizing andexecuting self- andintergroup evaluation

Use the course Web site as the product as well as theprocess environment, so that partial and ®nal productsare available for self-group, peer- and instructorevaluation, using structured evaluation instruments(CGI forms) also integrated into the course site; postand use these various forms of evaluation as basis for®nal evaluation of the group product (Collis andMeeuwsen, 1997)

Problems in relating groupactivities and productoutcomes to conceptualaspects of the course, tostudy materials, and toindividual assessment inexaminations

Use comparisons of group products, relative toconceptual issues in the course, as question on theexamination; and link criteria for on-going self-evaluation of group products to study materials andlecture notes also embedded in the course site

WWW-Based environments for collaborative group work 233

To illustrate how these combinations have developed, two particular courses in theFaculty of Educational Science and Technology at the University of Twente will bedescribed in the following sections. Each of these courses has, over a period of sev-eral years, evolved a combination of instructional strategy and WWW-based supportthat addresses each of the clusters of problems indicated in Table 1.

The ®rst course using a WWW environment: the 1994 version of On-Line and

Distance Learning

This course, in March 1994, used the (at the time, quite new) http protocol to sup-port a collaborative-writing experience involving 35 senior students in the courseOn-Line and Distance Learning and 12 specialists in computer-based collaborativework and computer-mediated communication, all colleagues of the instructor andall located outside The Netherlands. Together these persons formed 12 groups,working collaboratively at a distance as writing teams to produce a book about thetopic On-Line Learning. While e-mail and ftp were the primary tools used for the col-laboration, the WWW was used as a dissemination environment for the ®nal writtenproducts resulting from the collaboration. The WWW was chosen in that it provideda mutually accessible publication environment for all participants (resident in 15countries), as well as some hyperlinking among the written products. The book thatwas created was interesting not only for the collaborative process which generatedit and for the fact that it was a pioneer use of the WWW for the support of collabora-tive group-based projects, but also in that the participants knew that the result oftheir activity was to be used by the students in the following year of the course asan important part of their study materials. The 1994 version of this collaborativelyproduced book can be read via the WWW, at http:==www.edte.utwente.nl=ism=Online=home.htm. While it looks somewhat primitive now, in both content andstyle, the fact that it was collaboratively produced by an extended writing teamover an eight-week period in early 1994 entirely using e-mail, ®le transfer, and theWWW imbues the product with a social as well as educational signi®cance.

The 1995 On-Line and Distance Learning course

Following this, in the 1995 cycle of the course, the WWW was used more extensively,not only for dissemination of the ®nal product of the students' collaborative pro-jects, but also as an environment for support of all aspects of the course experience.In the 1995 course, the major task for the students, again working in collaborativegroups, was to revise the book created by their predecessors in the 1994 cohort,not only by updating the chapters (important in such a rapidly growing ®eld) butalso in reconsidering their design as study materials. A major goal of all of thecourses in our division is to prepare students to make informed choices among dif-ferent technologies for learning and communication purposes, to be aware of thestrengths and limitations of each, and to design learning materials appropriately forthe medium involved. Thus the revision of chapters, from a form written primarilyvia e-mail communication by the 1994 distributed-writing teams to a form thatwould make effective use of the hyperlinked WWW environment with opportunities

234 Collis

for visualisation, required considered debate about the overall role of print andelectronic study materials as companions or as replacements for print as learningmaterials. This 1995 course site can still be visited, at http:==www.edte.utwente.nl=ism=online95=campus=campus.htm (although only for archival purposes, as, likethe 1994 materials, the site is no longer maintained). The course has been exten-sively evaluated (Bos, Kijkstra and Morgen, 1996) and analysed from a number ofperspectives (Collis, Andernach and Van Diepen, 1996, 1997; Collis, 1997b).

From an instructional perspective, the 1995 course was less complex than the 1994course, in that in the 1995 cycle all participants were physically present for thecourse, whereas in the 1994 cycle, the collaborators for each chapter included per-sons in different countries, with different backgrounds and levels of professional ex-perience. However the 1995 course included a re-engineering of the entire approachto the class organisation, to better support the debates and collaborative authoringof the new version of the book. A computer-conferencing environment was used,parallel to the course WWW environment, and a substantial amount of asynchro-nous discussion took place among the students and involving the instructor. Thesuccess of this interaction was also its limitation for the instructor, as the 36 stu-dents contributed so many insightful comments in the conferencing environment(over 600 substantial entries) that it was not possible for the instructor to do justiceto the comments, either in timeliness or in depth.

The instructional re-engineering was made possible by linking all the course materi-als, including all materials relating to the group projects, in a common WWW-basedenvironment, so that the students could easily see each other's work and commentupon it during its development. The students' own work, as well as that fromthe previous year, became the critical base of learning material for the course. Inaddition, the WWW environment allowed continual cross-checking and cross-referencing of each of the 11 groups' work as it was developing, in order to stimulatethe coherency of the overall class product (the new version of `the book'). A visit tothe course site will show how the WWW environment facilitated the access and in-terrelationships of the old and new chapters, not only through the convenience oftheir hyperlinked proximity but also through the addition of an index, developedcollaboratively by all the 1995-cohort students as their writing progressed. Thus, aswell as being a motivating and convenient dissemination environment for the ®nalproducts, the WWW site allowed peer and formative evaluation to a degree neverbefore manageable in the instructor's experience for a relatively large group of stu-dents and their instructor all under heavy time constraints and operating in a short-term course framework (eight weeks total).

On-Line and Distance Learning (cycles 3, 4, and 5, 1996, 1997, 1998)

The third cycle of the course On-Line and Distance Learning (March±June 1996) fea-tured full integration of the course within a WWW environment, including supportfor all aspects of communication and collaborative group work. The course site,and the products of the students' collaborative group-based projects, can be visitedat http:==www.edte.utwente.nl=ism=Online96=campus.htm. An important tooladded to the WWW-support environment in this cycle was a WWW-based shared-


workspace environment called BSCW (GMD, 1997). The shared-workspace environ-ment allows each group of students to have its own working area, in which ®les ofall types (text, html, image, audio, video, ppt, etc.), can be organised and shared asthe group members wish. Students in a group can upload and download ®les intothe workspace, can edit and modify any ®le, can add new versions of a ®le whilemaintaining previous versions, can add notes to each other about any ®le, cancheck if their groupmates have read or made changes in a ®le, and can also engagein threaded discussions about a ®le or an entry typed directly into the workspace.All of this can be done through an ordinary WWW browser, without any special soft-ware being needed by the students. The server environment can be accessed di-rectly via the GMD in Germany, or can be downloaded at no cost and installed onone's own server. The tool is a major resource for handling problems of group mem-ory and coordination (see Table 1). Fig. 1 shows the top-level folders for the 1998course, organised around the two major activities of the course and the ®rst weeklyassignment. Within each of these top-level directories, each group of students hasits own folder, to organise its work and communication.

The fourth version (March±June 1997) of the On-Line and Distance Learning seniorcourse, which by that time was called Tele-Learning, can be seen at

Figure 1. The BSCW shared workspace tool (GMD, 1997), adapted for use at the start of the 1998cycle of the Tele-Learning course

236 Collis

http:==www.edte.utwente.nl=ism=telearn=home.htm. The ®fth cycle has recentlybegan (March 1998), the WWW environment unfortunately now requiring a pass-word to visit. In each cycle, collaborative learning and group-based projects con-tinue as the major organisational forms of the course (see Collis, 1997b).

THE COURSE ISM-1 (1996±97 AND 1997±98)

The course ISM-1 (ISM stands for Instrumentation Technology ± the name of our divi-sion when translated from Dutch), is another illustration of the evolution of instruc-tional strategies and the use of WWW-based tools to support collaborative learningin group-based project work. This course, which in its earlier cycles (1994±96) useda combination of computer conferencing and WWW tools, moved to substantial andintegrated use of a WWW environment in September 1996. A brief description of theISM-1 course follows. The course can be entered at http:==www.edte.utwente.nl=ism=ism1-96=home.htm, for the 1996±97 cycle, and at http:==www.edte.utwente.nl=ism=ism1-97=home.htm for the 1997±98 cycle. After this overview, three particular as-pects of the course that have been found to directly affect the success of the colla-borative group work involved will be discussed. These aspects related to self- andpeer evaluation, communication, and learning-how-to-learn in WWW-based environ-ments.

Objectives and organisation of the course ISM-1

The course ISM-1 is a required full-year course for ®rst-year students in the Facultyof Educational Science and Technology. Each year there are approximately 70 stu-dents in the course, some of them part-time students who are only present at theuniversity for limited periods of time per week. The general goals of the course areto introduce students to the ®eld and study of educational instrumentation, and inparticular to the process of designing, developing, and evaluating computer-basededucational instrumentation as members of a design team. The course is seen as aninitiation into the design process, not only in anticipation of future careers in thearea, but also in anticipation of future academic experiences in the Faculty duringfurther study at the University of Twente.

All of the objectives and organisation aspects of the course are directly accessiblevia the homepage of each year's cycle, via links to sections about the course goalsand objectives, the philosophy of the course, descriptions of the three projectsaround which the course is based (each lasting a trimester of approximately 11weeks), and links to all the work of the previous cycles of students. From the start,the importance of collaborative group-based learning and the expectations of thecourse with regard to personal responsibility and responsibility to one's group areemphasised. The process of working collaboratively in the group is continuallymonitored and is graded. For the students, directly out of secondary school, theseare new types of course objectives and grading procedures. The summary of thecourse objectives that follows shows how collaborative work is stressed in thecourse:


· Content and theoretical framework: To introduce students to major forms ofeducational instrumention and to a model for the lifecycle of instrumentationproducts (a model identifying choice of media type, design, development,implementation, and evaluation, as overlapping phases);

· Skill development via practical experiences with software tools and media-related equipment: To introduce students to a broad range of professionaltools and equipment for the design and development of educational instrumen-tion, and to scaffold students in their use of these resources in their own pro-ject experiences.

· Skill development in working and learning as a member of a collaborativegroup: To learn how to work and plan as a group, to successfully communicatewith and support one's group mates; to handle task division and work¯ow ac-countability in an ef®cient and effective manner, making appropriate use ofWWW-based tools.

· Individual goals related to the process of becoming a professional: To `learnhow to learn' in collaborative group-work situations, including learning to beself-regulated and to take self-responsibility for one's own contribution to agroup, learning to be an effective self- and peer evaluator, learning how to learnfrom one's group mates and by using effective inquiry strategies with WWWtools.

We have found that young students, such as these in their ®rst year, need consider-able scaffolding in terms of developing effective skills for group-based project work.We use the Jigsaw Method (Aronson et al., 1978), by which each group member hasa separate role, as the major instructional approach, because we have found thatthis can better focus task division and communication within the group and be-tween the instructors and the group members. In the Communication Centre of thecourse, for example, there are not only convenient ways to send a message to anyindividual in the course, but also to an entire group, or to all those with a certainrole (thus across groups). Also, we have found that young students need the stimu-lus of being graded on the collaborative process (Winnips, 1998) and appreciatehaving a convenient way to report on their progress and receive timely feedbackfrom the instructors. To handle these aspects, extensive use is made of a variety ofWWW-based tools and strategies. From the Production Centre page, arranged as amatrix with the groups as rows, students can ®nd the composition of their groupsand their speci®c tasks, links to individual planning pages for their groups, links to®nal versions of the products that the groups have developed (when a project iscompleted), links to all aspects of the work of the groups of earlier cycles of thecourse, and links to feedback from the instructors. Via the individual group-plan-ning pages, also arranged as matrices but with group tasks as rows, the managers ofthe groups are given structured group-report forms (CGI) to complete on variousoccasions, the self-evaluations of the group relating to their own products are sup-ported by forms and are always available for reference, and components of the pro-ducts themselves can be seen and evaluated by the Course Team and by thestudents in all of the other groups to facilitate on-going self- and peer evaluation ac-tivities throughout each project. In the 1997±98 cycle of the course, Livelink (OpenText, 1997), a professional groupware product for work¯ow management, is being

238 Collis

used by the groups, in order to see if the visualisation of the steps in the productionprocess as well as of the current progress of each group will help a group in its self-regulation (Van der Veen, Collis and Jones, 1998). Fig. 2 shows one of these visuali-sations, for a project in which the nine members of each group have roles relatingto the audio, image, and interactivity (JavaScript) design and production of a multi-media WWW site.

Key issues in collaborative group learning and their relationship to HCI research

Table 1 identi®ed clusters of key issues in collaborative learning in group-based pro-jects in higher education, and the above descriptions of two speci®c courses haveillustrated a variety of ways in which educational research has in¯uenced both theevolving instructional methods of the courses and also their evolving use of theWWW as learning and support environments. In particular, issues relating to theevaluation of students' work (both process and product; see Collis and Meeuwsen,1997); to supporting a variety of communication ¯ows with groups and betweengroups, individuals, and the instructors, particularly with regard to the work¯owmanagement of their collaborative work (Van der Veen, Collis and Jones, 1998); andto scaffolding the students' development of their own self-regulatory skills (Collisand Meeuwsen, 1998; Winnips, 1998), are of major current research interest. Besideseducational research into collaborative learning, there are many other researchareas relevant for our work, such as the domain of computer-supported cooperativework (CSCW) (see Collis, 1994), and the domain of human-computer interaction(HCI). In what ways is HCI research informing our decision making for thesecourses? We conclude by identifying three key focuses in research about WWW-

Figure 2. WWW-based work¯ow diagram, generated by the groupware product Livelink (Opentext,1997) of the production phase of a project, showing three parallel branches of within-group responsibil-ities. Clilckable via each icon are further instructions. Icons with numbers indicate a sub-deliverable mustbe passed on before the work¯ow can continue


based environments to support collaborative group-based project work in highereducation, and relate these to some key results from HCI research.

Issues relating to group collaboration and individual learning

From the research relating to factors that in¯uence group-based learning (see for ex-ample, Slavin, 1990), it is well established that group goals must be clear to all parti-cipants. It must be clear that, to succeed, the group as a whole must work togetherin an integrated way, but that each individual must also be personally accountablefor his own contribution and for his own learning attainment. In addition to contri-buting to a project's output, each student needs also to grow intellectually and tolearn the more speci®c subject matter of the course. This symbiotic relationshipbetween theory and practice, between individual learning and group collaboration,is a major challenge to us, as to all instructors who are responsible for courses in-volving collaborating learning. These issues will increase as WWW-based environ-ments make asynchronous course participation easier and more frequent. How canWWW-based course sites be designed to help with this concern (Winnips, 1998)?

Issues relating to project- and group management

We are researching project-management tools for WWW-based collaborative learn-ing environments, not only as mechanisms for group- and individual processes, butalso in terms of improving the instructor's insight as to when and how to intervenein group work (Van der Veen and Collis, 1997). Here we are particularly studyinggroupware tool suites as well as tools from CSCW research speci®cally focused oncollaborative work, to see what main functionalities should be integrated into ourWWW environments. A particular focus is on the ef®cient development of a groupmemory, and an ef®cient mechanism for the instructor to be aware of noteworthyaspects (including omissions) in that memory. We are currently comparing work-¯ow and shared-workspace environments linked to our course WWW site in termsof their bene®ts and usability for the students and instructors (Van der Veen, Collisand Jones, 1998).

Issues relating to ef®cient and effective communication

In previous courses, further back than the WWW-based courses described in thispaper and going back to the early 1980s, we have integrated various forms of com-puter-mediated communication into our courses, for various educational purposesand using various forms of CMC tools and environments from bulletin-board sys-tems through different varieties of computer-conferencing systems. Now, in our cur-rent WWW-based courses, we are making considerable use of what we callstructured communication, via CGI forms embedded directly in the course sites andimmediately linking student input as formatted html output in the site. In this way,student input is not only a mechanism for the articulation of individual ideas andunderstandings, but also becomes part of the course environment itself, linked toother study and group-learning resources. Our experiences with the design and useof forms-based structured communication is leading to a number of new research

240 Collis

questions with regard to how to best scaffold student learning via asynchronousWWW environments that support collaborative project work (Collis and Verhagen,1996; Winnips, 1998). In particular, we are asking questions such as `Is more better?'with respect to communication among students in collaborative groups, as well asmore generally in terms of functionalities within computer-based learning environ-ments (Moonen, 1994).

Relating these issues to HCI research

How can these issues be informed by HCI research? We take HCI to be the study andtheory of the interaction between humans and complex technology, how current in-put and output technologies affect this interaction, and in what situations thesetechnologies and techniques might to put to effective use (Booth, 1989). At one le-vel, that of the user and the system, HCI is also related to modeling the knowledge auser possesses and brings to a task, and to matching the user's needs with the sys-tem's information provision. But HCI research is also focused on the organisationallevel, broader than the individual and his or her own computer. Here implementa-tion issues, such as the effective use of a system within an organisation and bya large number of individuals and groups, are also important. Booth classi®esresearch in the HCI domain in terms of six categories, interactional devices andtechnologies, human-computer dialogue, cognitive models in human-computer in-teraction, usability, the design and development process, and the organisational im-pact of computer systems. Relating the three main issue clusters noted above toBooth's six categories of HCI research, where are we ®nding the most-relevant in-sights? We sketch this in Table 2:

A number of cells remain empty in the table, as clear relationships between some ofthe domains of the HCI literature and the practical problems of our collaborativelyoriented courses do not easily emerge. An example is the HCI research relating todesign methodology. The HCI literature about design and development method-ology does not appear to include discussions about evolutionary and experientialdevelopment; about conjointly developing a course site with the students as thecourse is in operation. Complicating the situation even more, most of the learningthat occurs in collaborative settings in higher education involves problem situa-tions where there are no pre-set and well-de®ned outcomes. In contrast to this, stan-dard questions relating to task and user modeling from the HCI literature, such as`What will be retained and what will be forgotten over time?', seem to assume well-de®ned tasks and outcomes. Classic performance-related questions in the HCIdomain, such as `What is the frequency of different error classes?' need to be re-expressed, perhaps in terms of differentiations such as client-level, server level, na-vigation level, representational level, and human-level errors.

It may be that re-expression is most needed in terms of the HCI category relating tohuman-computer dialogue. Much of the classic HCI literature implicitly or explicitlyequates human-computer dialogue to interface design. Shneiderman,'s `eight goldenrules of dialogue design' (1987, pp. 60±62) for example include guidelines such as`Sequences of dialogues should be organised into logical groups' and `Dialogues


Table 2. Particular issues in WWW-based environments involving the support of collaborative groupprojects, related to categories of HC-I research: Where are the most relevant intersections?

HC-I researchdomains(Booth, 1989)

Issues forcollaborative groupwork: integratingtheory and groupwork

Supporting groupmanagement andinteraction

Supporting effectivecommunication

Interaction devicesand technologies

Human-computerdialogue

Can occur viaembedded self-testitems, (for example,via JavaScript)

Can occur (via CGIforms for example;)but, a new term ismore appropriate:Human-humandialogue, mediatedby the computer

Can occur (forexample, viaembedded mailto andCGI forms), but a newterm is moreappropriate-human-human dialogue,mediated by thecomputer

Cognitive models inhuman-computerinteraction

Relevant not only forscaffoldingeffectively, but alsoin relation to the siteitself: How can webest organise thenavigation of a siteso that the learner'smental model of thesite mirrors what isavailable in the site?

Usability Relevantthroughout the site,such as in thedesign of the CGIforms and the use ofconsistentlyorganised andeasily learnableshared workingareas

Relevant via thedesign of the CGIforms

The design anddevelopmentprocess

continued overleaf

242 Collis

should be consistent'. Both of these are most frequently applied to what the usersees on the computer screen, pre-determined by the programmer. However, withthe use of CGI forms and WWW-based conferencing tools for structured dialogue, asin the ISM-1 site, a new perspective on dialogue must occur. Now it is not so muchwhat the programmer has pre-written, but the way in which the programmer pro-vides a shell for what the users will say themselves that matters. Shneiderman'sguideline `Dialogues should be consistent' can at one level be used as a guideline forthe design of CGI forms within a site, but at another level looses its meaning as soonas it is humans who are supplying the dialogue for a page, facilitated by the compu-ter, facilitated rather than constrained by the software design. Good human±humandialogue is critical to successful collaborative learning and perhaps to learning ingeneral. Perhaps the study of how to design instruction to better stimulate and sup-port dialogue among the students and the corresponding design of WWW-basedtools to support this dialogue should be called HHI (human±human interaction, asmediated by a computer) instead of HCI? More broadly, it might be said that muchof the HCI literature has classically assumed a single user interacting with a pre-programmed computer system as its domain. This focus particularly needs to be re-expressed when applied to the course situation involving large numbers of users,an instructor, and complex group tasks, as occurs when collaborative group pro-jects are the major instructional approach used.

One category of HCI research does seem directly relevant to issues in supportingcollaborative learning in group-based projects. This is the category noted in Table 2as Organisational Issues. The WWW sites we have described to support collaborativegroup-based project work cannot come into being without organisation commit-ment and support. All students, for example, need well-supported, affordable accessto adequately networked computers, as far as possible at any time and from a vari-ety of locations. Support personnel such as those who traditionally manage thecomputer usage of an educational organisation must learn to become Webmastersand handle new sets of technical issues, such as server maintenance of sharedworkspace and work¯ow tools. Instructors themselves must learn a considerablerange of new skills, both technical and instructional, and adapt their teaching and

Table 2. (continued)

HC-I researchdomains(Booth, 1989)

Issues forcollaborative groupwork: integratingtheory and groupwork

Supporting groupmanagement andinteraction

Supporting effectivecommunication

Organisationalimpact of computersystems

Relevant in aspectssuch as relatinggroup work tocourse examinationsand timetables

Relevant to reducethe time demands onthe instructor (andstudents) toeffectively managethe communication ina course


working approaches to these new approaches. The implications of all of these in-volve concerns that are directly parallel to what Shneiderman (1987) and Booth(1989) summarise from the HCI literature as negative aspects of computer systemsat the organisational level:

· Personal anxiety· Information-poor minorities· Complexity that bewilders all types of users· Organisational fragility as system failures halt many users

CONCLUSION

Unfortunately, both within the HCI literature and the literature of educational re-search, there do not yet seem to be many models offering practical applications ofways to eliminate these negative aspects. Yet these problems are now occurring asthe converse of the bene®ts of WWW sites in the support of collaborative groupwork in higher education. Here is a good point of mutual interest in which HCI andeducational-tool researchers can join forces. The sorts of syntheses offered inTables 1 and 2 are suggestions for such collaboration.

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