Student experiences: Collaboration for group assignment in distance education

Charles Sturt University uses a learning management system called “Interact” with multiple tools including wiki, synchronous chat, group mail, announcement and media repositories that support virtual team work. There are many adult learners in distance education. This paper explores distance education student experience and feedbacks in using e-learning technologies for online collaborative group assignment in real life. In a subject “Information and Knowledge Management in Organizations”, international and local students were grouped together for their group assignments. Each group undertook a case study project in which they proposed solutions for identified problems in their chosen organizations. Students worked as virtual teams in completing their case study assignment. Each group was provided with a private project site in Interact. Students developed their assignment in wiki and used various tools for communication and storage of documents. An anonymous web-based survey was conducted after students completed the group assessment. This research reports student perceptions on a wide range of factors including technology use and working with students from a different country and challenges they faced in their online group assessment. The findings indicate that e-learning technology plays a significantly useful role in facilitating student collaborative learning activities in group assignments. It also highlights challenges and barriers that need attention when conducting online distance education group assessments.