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achievement, their performance in facing the tasks
posed during both of the said parts of the course
was taken into account. In fact, the total grade of
each student in most cases was the sum of his/
her grades gained from the quizzes and the tasks
posed during the course, while in a few cases the
students' grade emerging from their participation
in the communications realized within forums and
chats was also added. Regarding the grading of the
learning tasks, it is worth noting that when a task
was assigned to each individual student, in some
cases, she/he gained a specific grade from her/his
performance, while in other cases the median of
individual grades gained by a group was viewed
as the grade of each student participating in it.
When a task was assigned to a group, the grade
gained by this group was assigned as a grade to
each individual student belonging to this group.
However, most important is the structuring of
the teaching procedure, so as to allow students
to become aware of their knowledge, including
misconceptions and difficulties. In addition, if
students are allowed to share and negotiate their
knowledge with their fellow students, they can
enrich and clarify their approaches to the subject
matter in focus.
Class organization was also mainly left in
teachers' hands. In fact, no attempts were designed
by PCSPs to guide their students to form groups
according their own preferences. On the other
hand, group work was completely left up to the
students. Specifically, students were provided with
forums and chat rooms to interact as both a whole
class and in small groups. However, no structure
for this interaction was suggested. In fact, the
concept of sharing ideas and negotiation of mean-
ings was not satisfactorily addressed by PCSPs
throughout the online courses they designed. In
addition, students were asked to face learning tasks
by collaborating with their teammates, but these
tasks were not designed to support collaboration.
To this end, the collaboration structures
designed by PCSPs were mainly used in a non
collaborative way. In particular, despite the fact
that a considerable number of PCSPs used the
STAD cooperation structure, its configuration
was only partly used. Specifically, the organiza-
tion of students into groups and the recognition
of the best work in front of the students were
emphasized, leaving out the organization of their
contribution to form solutions to the tasks given.
Evaluation procedures were also aimed at each
individual student. In particular, the feedback - in
terms of grades and suggestions - was designed
to be received by each student, rather than from
their classmates.
As to the learning materials incorporated into
the PCSPs' courses, we can say that, in technical
terms, various and diverse materials were used.
However, in terms of quality, many of these ma-
terials can be characterized as 'chatty', and some
of them were not necessary.
4. LESSONS LEARNED FROM
THE EMPIRICAL STUDY
At first glance, the results emerging from this
study show that the design of student-centered
collaborative online courses was a tricky task for
the PCSPs who participated in this experiment.
Specifically, PCSPs had emphasized emotional
preparation of their students to motivate them to be
actively involved in their own learning. However,
this motivation was designed according to teacher
hypotheses about students' interests and mainly
took the form of an action (usually a statement)
performed by the teacher. Only a few PCSPs
designed collaborative communication activities
around a question so as to enforce student-centered
motivation in terms of encouragement to express
their personal opinions and experiences of the
subject matter in focus.
As regards cognitive preparation, most PCSPs
used quizzes to diagnose students' previous and
prerequisite knowledge in order to allocate them
into groups. Needless to say, quizzes are useful in
informing the teacher about students' knowledge.
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