Empowering collaborative knowledge construction through the implementation of a collaborative argument map tool

Technological innovation has significantly enhanced the value of collaborative learning in higher education. Collaborating with peers has made learning more convenient by sharing educational resources and facilitating real-time interaction with classmates and instructors. Students remain connected and actively engaged at any time, and, from any location. Collaborative tools like Padlet offer personalized learning paths and flexible pacing, which sustain students’ interest and motivation. The objective of this study was to explore the influence of ease of use of the Padlet and students’ behavioural engagement towards students’ satisfaction with utilizing Padlet as a collaborative learning tool. A total of 170 students from UiTM, enrolled in three different elective courses, were selected as respondents. The collected data, obtained through a questionnaire, encompassed two satisfaction aspects: ease of use and behavioural engagement. Structural Equation Modelling-Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS) was employed to analyze the data. The findings clearly show that the ease of use of the Padlet and students’ behavioural engagement positively influence students’ satisfaction in classroom activities. In summary, Padlet is a transformative tool that revolutionizes the landscape of collaborative learning in higher education. Its integration cultivates an environment of active participation, connectivity, and personalized learning, ultimately enhancing student satisfaction.

With the continual rise of online and hybrid modes of learning, students collaborating through social media networks (SMN) is becoming increasingly important. Yet, students are struggling to unleash the potential of SMN to support their learning. This study investigated how SMN can be effectively used for collaborative learning in higher education through using a mixed methodology. Findings showed that SMN's effective use influenced students’ collaborative learning goal attainment and was facilitated by perception of SMN affordances and social capital. This thesis extends the theory of effective use by proposing an approach for contextualizing effective use of SMN for collaborative learning.

Learning analytics leverages the use of technology to gather and analyse data about student performance, engagement, and learning behaviours, which can help educators make informed decisions about how to improve learning outcomes. In higher education, learning analytics can provide insights into student engagement, performance, and learning pathways. Collaborative learning in higher education involves a group of students working together towards a common goal or task. Collaborative learning encourages students to work together to solve problems, analyse information, and make decisions, especially in self-directed learning environment. Through discussion and debate, students develop critical thinking skills and learn to approach problems from different perspectives to enhance problem-solving skills. Collaborative learning provides opportunities for students to work with others from diverse backgrounds, helping them develop interpersonal skills such as communication, teamwork, and leadership. While collaborative learning helps students to foster critical thinking and develop interpersonal skills, students’ activities and engagement in collaborative learning are not properly assessed and measured. Student performance indicators are highly dependent on the learning activities and resources used in the learning management system based on individual basis. The ability and potential of learning analytics to track students’ behaviour and performance in team, and to monitor the effectiveness of their sharing and communication is not fully utilised in higher education. This paper addresses this issue and aims to provide an overview of collaborative learning analytics. The overview elaborates essential elements in collaborative learning and defines features in analytics to support collaborative learning. The overview is expected to guide to educators and developers in promoting and assessing students’ performance based on collaborative works.

Ensemble practices have been essential to the performing and visual fine arts over centuries. The skills of working in ensembles, including team work and collaborative learning, are increasingly understood to be critical and transferable professional attributes. However, much teaching of ensembles is practical and embodied, relying on tacit knowledge within a focused specialism. This kind of approach champions depth of expertise in a particular field, but may have limitations, particularly where more explicit awareness is needed to support transferring practical skills to new contexts. There is therefore a need to strengthen reflective practice in ways that connect explicit procedural understanding with tacit practical experience. To serve this purpose, this paper develops a reflective matrix as a framework to support dynamic reflection for students and teachers in higher arts education. The matrix emerges from analysis of the literature across music, theatre, dance and visual fine art.

The increasing linguistic diversity in higher education has led to a growing need for inclusive and effective multilingual instructional strategies. This conceptual paper examines the potential of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to support multilingual instruction by addressing the communication barriers faced by non-native speakers in diverse classroom settings. Drawing on current theoretical perspectives and technological developments, the paper explores how NLP tools—such as real-time translation, speech recognition, and automated feedback systems—can enhance comprehension, accessibility, and collaborative learning in higher education. These technologies offer opportunities to bridge language gaps, enabling students to engage more effectively with content delivered in multiple languages. The paper also discusses challenges related to language diversity, technological limitations, and cultural sensitivity in implementing NLP in educational contexts. While acknowledging these limitations, the paper argues that integrating NLP into multilingual instruction represents a promising direction for fostering inclusivity and equity in higher education. Ultimately, this theoretical exploration urges institutions to embrace innovative language technologies to create more dynamic and supportive learning environments for students of all linguistic backgrounds.

Creating learning personas for collaborative learning in higher education: A Q methodology approach

Analyzing collaborative interactions: divergence, shared understanding and construction of knowledge

Collaborative learning activities, based on constructivism, were applied within the introductory course on the Internet for the first year students of Computer science at the Faculty of Education. In the paper we present a form of wiki-supported collaborative learning followed by collaborative and peer assessment. We will make overview of the elements which indicate contributions of individual students to the project as well as their contribution to the process of collaboration. In order to evaluate how reliable are collaborative and peer assessment, we consider how the grades from wikis' assessment are related to the final grade of the course and to the grades of other learning activities.

CSCLearning? : participation, learning, activities and knowledge construction in computer-supported collaborative learning in higher education

The purpose of this multi-case study was to examine the collaborative learning process in two online graduate courses over 13 weeks. The collaboration was assessed through instructors’ and students’ perspectives in terms of what factors successfully supported collaboration, what factors had a negative impact on collaboration, and what recommendations could be made to enhance future experiences. Data were collected from various sources: semi-structured interviews, documentation, synchronous and asynchronous discussion forums, and online observation. Findings from the study identified three essential conditions that were required to support online students’ collaboration: 1) building a safe environment; 2) helping students to feel comfortable; and 3) preparing students for meaningful collaboration. Also, the study identified factors that should be considered in designing online collaborative learning and the necessary structures and scaffolds that need to be in place to support online collaborative learning. Online collaborative learning requires planning, managing, and facilitating.

Twitter is a cold medium that allows users to deliver content-rich but small packets of information to other users, and provides an opportunity for active and collaborative communication. In an education setting, this social media tool has potential to increase active learning opportunities, and increase student engagement with course content. The effects of Twitter on learning dynamics was tested in a field biology course offered by a large Canadian University: 29 students agreed to take part in the Twitter project and quantitative and qualitative data were collected, including survey data from 18 students. Students published 200% more public Tweets than what was required, and interacted frequently with the instructor and teaching assistant, their peers, and users external to the course. Almost 80% of students stated that Twitter increased opportunities for among-group communication, and 94% of students felt this kind of collaborative communication was beneficial to their learning. Although students did not think they would use Twitter after the course was over, 77% of the students still felt it was a good learning tool, and 67% of students felt Twitter had a positive impact on how they engaged with course content. These results suggest social media tools such as Twitter can help achieve active and collaborative learning in higher education.

The mobile instant messaging application, WhatsApp Messenger (WhatsApp), has become a popular form of communication among adolescents, especially university students, and it has increasingly been used as a tool in collaborative learning in higher education. The use of WhatsApp for education to facilitate ubiquitous learning has been practised worldwide due to its popularity and potential to support teaching and learning processes derived from the diffusion of mobile technology and empowered by the use of smartphones. This study investigates the impact of the use of WhatsApp in a higher education learning environment on students’ perceived academic performance and team effectiveness. A convergent parallel mixed-methods research design was adopted with data collected through a self-administered online survey and two focus group interviews with students of a private university in the Sunway City, Malaysia. The findings of this study present insights into the popularity of WhatsApp among university students and that students use it for social and educational purposes due to its perceived ease of use and usefulness in enhancing academic performance and team effectiveness. Although WhatsApp is recognised as a rich and powerful collaborative tool for students with a positive impact on academic performance, it has a limited impact on the cohesion and openness of team effectiveness.

The dissemination of university knowledge has been traditionally based on lectures to students organised in homogenous groups. The advantages of this method are that it can give a unified vision of content, guaranteeing equal access to knowledge for all students. The 21st century university must combine its learning and teaching methods and incorporate different strategies and educative resources, as well as seeking to advance individual learning and promote collaborative work. The relevance of Web 2.0 is clear in this university learning context as it enables collaborative work to be carried out using ICT. In this chapter, we will deal with the different possible uses of social software in university teaching. We will show that the proper use of Web 2.0 tools can favour collaborative learning and promote new ways of teaching and learning.

The strategy, which aims to promote student participation, peer interaction, and shared knowledge construction, is increasingly called into question by empirical evidence suggesting that this assumption does not consistently hold true, particularly in diverse and resource-constrained contexts. This study investigated group work assessment as a form of collaborative learning in higher education, focusing on the challenges associated with its implementation and the perceptions of both lecturers and students regarding its effectiveness. Guided by Social Constructivism Theory, which emphasises learning through social interaction and mediated collaboration, the study adopted a qualitative approach within an interpretivist paradigm. A case study design was employed, involving ten purposively selected participants, five lecturers and five final-year students, from a Faculty of Education at a selected university in South Africa. Data were generated using reflective instruments and analysed through thematic analysis in accordance with Braun and Clarke’s six-step procedure. The findings revealed that group work assessment is hindered by significant challenges, including poor communication, lack of participation, absence of leadership, and its time-consuming nature, all of which undermine meaningful collaboration. While lecturers generally perceived group work as a valuable pedagogical tool, students’ experiences were more ambivalent, highlighting a disconnect between intention and practice. The study concludes that group work assessment does not automatically foster participation and must be intentionally designed and facilitated. It recommends clear instructional guidelines, structured leadership roles, active monitoring, and assessment designs that balance collaboration with individual accountability to enhance inclusive and effective learning outcomes in higher education.

Assessment in higher education has been dominated by traditional practices that mainly focus on grades for student progression. However, there has been some transformation in assessment due to the advancement in education. Generally, assessment is viewed as central to student learning and experience. Assessment as learning, is not just an addition to learning and teaching, but it presents an opportunity through which students’ involvement in assessment could manifest as part of learning: assessment is learning-oriented. Assessment as Learning in Higher Education is about student empowerment; hence, students take ownership of their own learning process. Furthermore, assessment as learning promotes constructivism through student engagement and knowledge construction. This bibliometric analysis analysed the trends evident from research on assessment as learning and implementation in Higher Education. Data were retrieved from the Scopus database and analysed using VOSviewer. The thematic analysis approach was also employed. The study reveals that self-assessment is important in promoting student empowerment, which is one of the benefits of assessment as learning. It is important that higher education institutions rethink assessment as learning because this might assist in achieving the 21st-century educational goal of independent learning. The study’s findings confirm that there is a need for constructive alignment of teaching, learning and assessment; hence, assessment as learning becomes more significant. The findings provided an overview of key themes, research gaps and potential areas for future research. The insight that was gained from this bibliometric analysis will be valuable for lecturers, course designers, universities, assessors and researchers seeking to improve assessment in higher education.