Taking the 'A' out of Asynchronous

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Collaboration Tools

Taking the 'A' out of Asynchronous

7/1/2008

By Matt Villano

Delane reports that in the past, when he conducted this process via e-mail, some counseling sessions required back-andforth correspondence, and in some cases, it could take hours to resolve a single issue. However, with real-time collaboration (up-and-running since January) he can pass along information and immediately clear up any breakdowns in students' understanding, enabling the educational process to advance seamlessly.

"Because it's an online class, and because most of my students have busy lives and can't get to a physical office, this technology truly does offer the next best thing," he says. "It guarantees that even though students are logging on from home, they can still interact with classmates and collaborate in much the same way as they would if they were sitting right across from each other."

New Take on Teamwork

Educators at other schools are turning to synchronous collaboration tools to revolutionize the traditional approach to teamwork. Case in point: California State University-Fullerton, where Katherine Kantardjieff, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, recently used technology from iLinc Communications to enable students in her computational biochemistry course to collaborate in virtual space, as part of a final exam on genomics. For the purposes of this exercise, Kantardjieff turned to iLinc to set up a virtual meeting place.Once students had their assignments, she opened the meeting area and encouraged them to gather there on their own time.

Over the course of the semester, Kantardjieff says she logged on at various times of the day and night and was shocked to see students working together in the room almost constantly. "I'd come in at 11 pm on a Sunday night and there were 10 students in the room," she recalls, noting that the 30-student class was a blended offering with both physical and online components. "As an educator, it's pretty exciting to see students working together so eagerly."

Use of the technology has paid huge dividends thus far. While Kantardjieff says this was the first time she used the technology, she admits that final projects for the genomics lesson were some of the best she's ever received. She adds that she was so impressed with student response to the virtual collaboration space that she plans to ask future students for permission to record the sessions; she'll factor the online collaboration efforts into class participation grades.

At The University of Georgia, Chi Thai, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering, is using a different technology to enhance teamwork in other ways. There, with the one-two punch of NetSupport Manager and the Camtasia Studio screen recorder from TechSmith, Thai can set up elaborate modeling equations on his computer, then push them over a LAN to student computers so that his students can step in and finish the job, or simply follow along.