Designing of a Mobile Collaboration Application for Student Collaborative Group Work: Evidence from China

With the advance of mobile technologies, it has been easier for mobile devices to support collaborative activities. This opportunity brings about new possibilities to carry out mobile collaborative work and mobile learning (m-learning) which play an important role in relevant field. Researchers find that Process Support Systems (PSS) and Collaboration Engineering (CE) can benefit the collaborative process. However, there is few research applying PSS and CE theories to mobile collaborative applications. In this paper, we present the design of a simple PSS: one Android meeting application based on CE methods to support university students´ collaborative study. We carried out an experiment among 75 students from 6 Chinese universities and evaluated the capabilities of the application with a survey and in-depth interview. Our findings suggest that this application can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of students´ group collaboration. Our study further serves as an example that CE methods are useful for mobile collaboration systems.