MACL, a mobile application for Collaborative Learning

• Main Author: Kheiravar, Salma
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2013
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/45568

Collaborative Learning actively engages students in group activities and is known as a very effective teaching and learning technique. Collaborative Learning emphases student-instructor and student-student collaboration during the learning process. Tablets can be used in a variety of ways to maximize the effectiveness of Collaborative Learning. Currently, the existing solutions focus on student-instructor in-class collaboration because of their physical features (lightness, screen size, easy to carry, touch interactions, etc.). This thesis explores the use of tablets to help instructors and students collaborate in real-time both during the class and outside the class. In this thesis, I propose a real-time collaborative approach for student-student and student-instructor interaction and present a prototype with emphasis on student-student interaction. The developed prototype allows students to solve flowchart problems individually or collaboratively either in a face-to-face or an on-line environment. A study is conducted to evaluate the usability of the system and to determine its effectiveness for Collaborative Learning. During the study, students were randomly assigned to 3 groups (individual group work, face-to-face group work, on-line group work). All groups solved 2 flowchart problems both on paper and using the prototype. The results suggest that the prototype is motivating and easy to use. It also increases the amount of in-group discussion and provides an equivalent opportunity for students to contribute to the problem in comparison to a paper version of the exercise.