Collis IJET 1997>/title> </head> <body bgcolor = "#FFFFFF"> <pre> Collis, B., Andernach, T., & VanDiepen, N. (1997). Web environments for group-based project work in higher education. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 3 (2/3), 109-130. ____________________________________________________________ The article describes the problems involved in two college courses that use Web-based environments to support CSCW. The learning environment includes a Web-embedded shared workspace that supports group work, Web-based CMC, common study materials available to all participants, the syllabus and all assignments, and guidelines for evaluating the products of other groups of students in the class (sets of Web pages that represent their collaboratively produced product). Collis lists the persistent problems and her solutions. 1. Problems in maintaining course cohesion - integrate all aspects of the course in a single commonly accessible Web site, with all student work linked to the course site (including works in progress). 2. Problems in motivating and structuring collaboration - choose a task that is intrinsically motivating, where a team approach is required, and where a jigsaw method capitalizes on distributed expertise. 3. Problems in motivating and structuring communication - have a manager report the progress and reflections of each group via embedded forms and other tools available on the Web site so that a group archive can be built from all the messages (like CSILE) 4. Problems in maintaining group memory - use tools with shared workspace functionalities built into the Web site so that all project management information and partial products are available to all. 5. Problems in organizing and executing self- and inter-group evaluation - use structured evaluation instruments that are built into the Web site, build the Web site itself from partial products by all groups in the class, post and use the evaluations of the other group products as the basis for the final evaluation of all group products (constructive feedback from peers). 6. Problems in relating group activities to the conceptual aspects of the course, study materials, and individual assessments - use comparisons of group products, relative to conceptual issues in the course, as exam questions; link criteria for ongoing self-evaluation of group products (reflections) to study materials and lecture notes also embedded in the Web site. </pre> </body> </html>