Creating an Interactive, Collaborative, Groupware supported Learning Environment for Computing Sciences

行业要求计算机科学专业的毕业生能够在团队中协同工作。然而，学生们在这方面往往达不到业界的期望。今天，大多数大学只有一两门课程，学生们在小组中学习。该项目正在利用一个初步的合作学习实验室课程，重点放在团队合作，沟通的有效性，并在解决问题的合作。学生们在小组中一起工作，他们的想法是，在以后的课程中，他们将获得与由具有各种背景和能力的人组成的大型团队合作的经验。由于研究表明学生的学习通过积极参与得到改善，因此本项目采用互动协作学习环境，建立在对协作和互动学习进行调查的几个研究项目的基础上。学生定期在实验室环境中与教师会面。非常简短的讲座用于介绍主题，而密集的实验室工作用于积极探索主题。该实验室拥有现代化的群件和用户友好的软件开发环境，其物理安排支持协作活动。此开发环境还支持在远程站点进行的工作。

Industry demands that graduates of programs in the computing sciences be able to work collaboratively in teams. However, students have often fallen short of the industry's expectations in this regard. Today, most universities have only one or two courses in which students work in small groups. This project is making use of an initial collaborative learning laboratory course with emphasis placed on teamwork, effectiveness of communication, and cooperation in problem solving. Students work together in small groups with the idea that, in later courses, they will gain experience in working with larger teams made up of people with a range of backgrounds and abilities. Since research shows that students' learning is improved by active involvement, this project uses an interactive-collaborative learning environment, building on several research projects which have investigated collaborative and interactive learning. Students meet regularly with the instructor in a laboratory situation. Very brief lectures are used to introduce the topics, while intensive laboratory work is used to explore the topics actively. The laboratory has modern groupware and a user-friendly software development environment with a physical arrangement that supports collaborative activities. This development environment also supports work conducted at remote sites.