The union of Blackboard Collaborate and Google Drive for online group learning

Abstract/Snapshot:

Weekly Blackboard Collaborate sessions provide the opportunity to offer learning experiences online and to record learning electronically. While learning in the Collaborate online classroom, often, group work forms a part of the learning experience. While in groups, students go into breakout rooms to further discuss the topics of the day. This group work, although fed back to the groups in the recorded session, is somewhat lost unless students listen in to the whole session again. One way of documenting these group sessions, is to use Google Docs for groups to record the essence of their discussions. Google Docs provides an excellent online real-time platform for up to 50 students’ simultaneous cooperative construction of documents.

By embedding a Google Drive group work template into the weekly Blackboard Collaborate session, all class activities, including what happened in each of the breakout rooms, is recorded. With teacher comments on the Google Doc added after the session, students have the opportunity to reflect on the teacher's feedback at a later stage.

A Google Site, designed with a page for each of the 12 weeks of semester, was created to house the weekly Google Drive documents to record all group work from the Blackboard Collaborate session in shared document format. This joins the strengths of the 2 online learning platforms and bridges the two worlds of simultaneous and non-simultaneous online learning.

Learning Context

This combined Google Drive - Blackboard Collaborate platform can be used to supplement face-to-face classes as well as online learning.

Rationale

To record student group learning experiences from Blackboard Collaborate sessions in an accessible manner.

Learning Design

What are the learning outcomes?

Students will experience cooperative deep learning based on Social Constructivism pedagogical theory.
12-weeks of learning materials that students created together during group work, including teacher’s feedback, is ready for reflection and revision.
How and when? The process…
Set up Google Drive documents for group work using the instructions under Resources. Make a space for each group to work in the shared document.
Set up a Google Site to house the weekly Drive documents (see how to create your Site from the Template in the Resources section)
Share the site with your students and each of the Google Drive documents
Each week in the Collaborate sessions, open up the relevant week’s Drive document as students break into group work.
Students will all then have access to a copy of all group work.
What are the challenges that could impact on this pattern? How will you overcome them?

A knowledge of Google Drive documents and Google Sites is required. The step by step guides provided have been designed to assist in the implementation of this pattern.

Conditions/Critical Success Factors

1. Learn how to use Google sites
2. Teach students how to use Collaborate and the Google Drive sharing feature

Resources/Technology

Case Studies/Implementation

Students in different groups have been asked to prepare

1. MCQ with answers
2. Short-answer Questions
that directly relate to the learning outcome of the online lecture on that day. The students have been shown to be highly engaged and they work together very effectively. The teacher has also actively provided relevant feedback at the same time.

Outcomes

Students will have developed good teamwork skills to work cooperatively.

Students will have learnt how to give and receive constructive feedback.

How does this approach provide an engaging student experience?'

Students work cooperatively and collaboratively in class online activities that directly relate to the course’s learning outcome. This will help them to clarify the importance, the key learning outcomes and the application of such new learning. It also provides them with a record of all online groupwork, this is then used by students for study purposes.

Learning engagement/activities

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The union of Blackboard Collaborate and Google Drive for online group learning

Design Pattern

The union of Blackboard Collaborate and Google Drive for online group learning