Easy Collaboration Process Support System Design for Student Collaborative Group Work: A Case Study

Collaborative case studies and Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) play an important role in education now. Researchers find that Computer Assisted Collaboration Engineering (CACE) and Process Support Systems (PSS) can support the collaborative process well. There is little research indicates that what kind of CACE is useful to support the group case studies in the CSCL settings. In this paper, we design an easy and simple PSS to support college students´ collaborative group case studies and find out whether the system can work well. We basically do the system analysis with the Seven-Layer Model of Collaboration (SLMC) model and CACE/PSS. Then the Discussion Platform for student case studies is developed with the agile method on the WAMP platform (Windows/Linux+ Apache+ Mysql+ Php). Finally, the PSS has been tested in a case study of a China university course throughout one semester by 9 student groups. Survey data has been collected to evaluate the system and generate conclusions.