Collaboration in online courses: Drawing insights from the learners for effective course design

Teachers set the stage and provide enabling mechanisms to facilitate collaboration in online courses. There are various reasons backed by learning theories why collaboration among learners, both in the residential and online courses, is desirable - much challenge though on how to achieve such is faced in the latter. One major reason for collaboration is the promise of active construction of knowledge, enhanced problem articulation, and benefits in exploring and sharing information and knowledge gained from peer-to-peer communication (Haythornthwaite, nd). It is clear on the part of the teachers what outcomes they hope to accomplish when they require students to collaborate as part of the directed learning process, hence the course is designed to suit the said purpose. But how do learners go about collaborating with one another? What are the issues/challenges they encounter in the process of doing collaborative works? What can we learn from students on how they collaborate and what are its implications in course design and learner support services framework? These are the questions which this paper hopes to answer by doing a content analysis of the online posts and personal journals by students in three (3) online courses at the University of the Philippines Open University. It is also hoped that this paper will add to the building knowledge about collaboration in online courses.