Collaborative Learning Design within Open Source E-Learning Systems - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 218

for the concepts of group creation and monitor-
ing. In fact, despite the availability of all tools
mentioned above, collaborative activity sequences
for the performance of the aforementioned spe-
cific collaboration methods within LAMS have
not yet reported. One of the contributions of this
chapter is to propose specific implementations
of a number of essential collaboration methods
using the previously mentioned tools of LAMS.

study. In the following section, the description of
the aforementioned steps is reported.

Focus of the Study

This study focus on the investigation of PCSPs' at-
tempts to integrate specific collaboration methods
into their online 'learning design' approaches. To
this end, specific emphasis is put on the investiga-
tion of the kind of learning activities -that PCSPs
designed during this empirical study- related to
all the specific parts an online course consists
of, namely; stating the stage, scheduling of the
course, integration of learning materials, class
organization, learning tasks, communication,
collaboration and evaluation.

3. THE CONTEXT OF THE
EMPIRICAL STUDY

The Method of the Study

This empirical study focuses on the investigation
of PCSPs' attempts to integrate specific collabora-
tion methods into their online 'learning design'
approaches. Exploiting the results of this study,
the design and implementation of a set of web
based collaborative patterns reflecting diverse
collaboration methods is proposed. These patterns
can be used as scaffolding tools to help teachers
take into consideration essential collaborative
learning methods in their learning design practices.
In terms of methodology, this study is a qualita-
tive research educational methodology and can be
characterized as a case study (Cohen & Manion,
1989). In terms of the method used, this study
is a field study. Qualitative methodologies are
usually suggested to illuminate what really hap-
pens in under-researched areas such as in PCSPs'
collaborative learning design approaches. This
methodology was used in order to investigate the
PCSPs' collaborative learning design approaches
and to form conclusions based on the data coming
from the field experiment. Below the method used
for this investigation is presented as a sequence of
steps regarding the following issues: (a) focus of
the study, (b) setting the learning experiment, (c)
data resources, (d) data analysis, (e) presentation of
results, (d) lessons learned from the said empirical

The Learning Experiment

The learning experiment took place during an elec-
tive course entitled 'Informatics and Education'
provided to its CS undergraduate students by the
School of Science and Technology of the Hellenic
Open University. Specifically, thirty-three PCSPs
at the Hellenic Open University participated in a
learning design experiment aiming at the design of
short online courses using MOODLE (Dougiamas
& Taylor, 2002). In this experiment, PCSPs were
asked to take into account modern constructiv-
ist and social views (Jonassen, 1999; Vygotsky,
1978) of learning and a set of specific collabora-
tive methods to accomplish the following task:
' design a short online course for the learning of
iteration algorithmic structures by secondary level
education students' . In particular, in the context of
this course, PCSPs were asked to design specific
lesson plans, integrating appropriate learning
materials, collaborative learning activities and
collaborative communication structures, as well
as questions and teacher interventions that could
encourage students' critical thinking.
To successfully address this task, PCSPs were
provided with instructions in the form of text-based
learning materials regarding: (a) modern social