Collaborative Learning Design within Open Source E-Learning Systems - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 222

consisting of three students. The allocation of stu-
dents into groups was mainly viewed as a teacher
task by the majority of PCSPs (31 PCSPs), and
group formation was mainly based on students'
heterogeneity in terms of their achievement. At
this point, it is worth noting that half the PCSPs
used specifically designed quizzes to assess their
students' knowledge in order to classify them into
heterogeneous groups.
Learning tasks : All PCSPs designed learning
tasks to be performed by their students during the
introductory and consolidation parts of the course.
Some PCSPs (8 PCSPs) also designed tasks to
be faced by their students during the evaluation
part of the course- as well as after the end of the
course - for the extension and further consolida-
tion of their knowledge. It is worth noting that
all of these tasks were taken from the students'
world, so that they would be actively and pas-
sionately involved in constructing their solution
structures. However, the majority of these tasks
(all except one) were simple enough not to require
collaboration among team members for them to
be successfully realized. Some PCSPs assigned
such tasks to an entire group and others to each
individual student.
Communication : The majority of PCSPs (26
PCSPs) used both whole class and group chat
rooms for synchronous communication, as well as
both whole class and group forums for asynchro-
nous communication. The e-mail facility was also
used to inform students about their allocation in
groups. Whole class forums were mainly used for
welcoming the students onto a specific course, for
the assessment of the course by the participants
and for the recognition of students' good work.
Whole class chat rooms were mainly used for the
investigation of students' previous knowledge
(brainstorming), for meta-cognitive assessment
of students' progress at the end of the course and
for the expression of students' difficulties with
the learning of the concepts in question. Group
forums and group chat rooms were mainly used to
provide students with opportunities to exchange

ideas about the difficulties they encountered fac-
ing the learning tasks given. Due to the fact that
these tasks were not mainly designed to be real-
ized by a group, but could be easily performed
by an individual student, students' contributions
within group forums and group chat rooms took
the form of expression of students' difficulties in
successfully performing these tasks.
However, few PCSPs (6 PCSPs) established
specific communication guidelines within chat
rooms and forums, while some (3 PCSPs) used
the Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning method
to structure communication in forums. Few PCSPs
(4 PCSPs) also formed specific pre-defined ques-
tions to structure the communication in forums and
chat-rooms. A considerable number of PCSPs (23
PCSPs), however, established specific days and
hours for the chats they integrated in their learn-
ing designs, although most PCSPs (24 PCSPs)
designed non ending forums as well as loose and
unstructured communication procedures to take
place within forums and chat-rooms.
Collaboration : The favorite collaboration
structure used by a considerable number of PCSPs
(23 PCSPs) was the STAD structure. This structure
emphasizes heterogeneous grouping, individual
and group assessment as well as recognition of the
students who performed the best work. However,
the tasks designed were not appropriate to be
realized by teams. In addition, some PCSPs (17
PCSPs), designed rewarding procedures whereas
others did not.
Evaluation : All PCSPs designed evaluation
procedures for the investigation of students'
achievement while few PCSPs (6 PCSPs) designed
additional procedures for the investigation of
the effectiveness of their courses. As regards the
evaluation of students' achievement, all PCSPs
designed quizzes including multiple-choice and
true-false questions. These quizzes were assigned
to be performed by the students after each part of
the course (introductory and consolidation parts)
and, in some cases, also at the end of the whole
course. In addition, for the evaluation of students'