Computer-assisted collaborative learning: the new generation of simulations and social computing in the business curriculum

Citation

Clarke, T. (2009), "Computer-assisted collaborative learning: the new generation of simulations and social computing in the business curriculum", Education + Training, Vol. 51 No. 5/6. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2009.00451eaa.001

Computer-assisted collaborative learning: the new generation of simulations and social computing in the business curriculum

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Education + Training, Volume 51, Issue 5/6

The educational world of computer-assisted collaborative learning, already well-established in the application of simulations to achieve integrative approaches, recently has become turbo-charged by the rapid and often spontaneous introduction of the social computing technologies of Web 2.0. This has caused palpable excitement across the educational spectrum (by some akin to a moral panic). Extensive surveys of the adoption of Web 2.0 in education have been completed in the United States (Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005); in the UK (RCI, 2009); and in Australia (Kennedy, 2008). All reveal widespread enthusiasm for the new learning technologies, but are sceptical on whether this represents the total transformation in teaching and learning that is often suggested. Meanwhile the sophistication of web-based simulations offers many avenues to enliven the curriculum with integrative problem solving. The collected work in this special double issue of the journal aims to assemble some of the leading edge work in both social computing and in business simulations. It amounts to a current survey of an educational frontier that is rapidly changing.

In a startling analysis Bill Ashraf highlights both sides of the Web 2.0 democratisation of the means of media production, distribution, and connection. While it has never been easier, quicker or cheaper to communicate, this has stimulated different and complex patterns of behaviour. Learning and teaching is experiencing a process of transition involving different modes of learning, institutional change, pedagogy and research. Issues of flexibility, personalization and inclusion are being worked through, though most students still want the benefits of face-to-face contact.

A thorough appraisal of the literature on the rise of social software in education is presented by Shailey Minocha. She addresses the questions educators have about social software initiatives including educational goals, benefits to students, educators, and institutions. The characteristics of Web 2.0 software are analysed, focusing on what it is about them that makes them social. Which social software methods and tools are appropriate for which kind of activities is explored, investigating the link between social software and skills of communication, writing, team-working, and group collaboration. Minocha concludes social software seems to match well with modern thinking about educational practice, promising learners new opportunities to be independent in their study and research. She argues social software tools encourage a wider range of expressive capability, facilitating more collaborative ways of working and providing a setting for learner achievements to attract authentic audiences. To encourage these possibilities, social software tools have evolved that create distinctive forms of support for learning and for independent research. Developing the skills of problem solving, research and collaborative working equips students well for the world of work.

Graeme Martin et al. offer some fascinating scenarios and strategies for Web 2.0. They bring together ideas from the Web 2.0 literature, and insights from technology-related projects to produce a framework for strategies on Web 2.0 focusing on the implications for human resource professionals. Reflecting on these data and experiences, two related sets of characteristics of social media begin to emerge, which help address the question of what strategic choices we can make to get the best from Web 2.0 while recognising the risks of doing so. These characteristics are engagement and control, which Martin et al. use as dimensions of a matrix of scenarios. They set out four scenarios on the use of traditional and new social technologies intended to enhance collaboration and give employees voice in matters that affect them at work. In doing so they show how Web 2.0 can alter the choices available to employees and organisations to collaborate and exercise their respective voices. It is in this sense they argue these technologies have the potential to transform the business model, especially in organisations that are multi-site, multi-country or employ substantial numbers of V-generation or remote workers.

Social software is defined as a class of networked tools that support and encourage individuals to learn together while retaining individual control over their time, space, presence, activity, identity and relationship by Shailey Minocha following Anderson (2005). The key aspect of a social software tool being is that it involves wider participation in the creation of information which is shared. Minocha records how educational institutions are increasingly making use of:

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  tools that facilitate collaborative authoring, such as blogs and wikis;

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  web sites that enable sharing of bookmarks, photographs, and videos, such as Delicious, Flickr and YouTube;

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  social networking platforms such as Elgg and Ning; and

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  3-D virtual worlds, such as Second Life that facilitate synchronous group discussions and meetings.

While such social software tools are of increasing interest in education, they need to be well grounded within the pedagogical activities and objectives of courses. In the empirical research Minocha conducted, insights into the following issues concerning the application of social computing software were gathered:

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  benefits the learners and educators perceive in the pedagogical usage of these tools;

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  the design of activities and the challenges involved in using the tools, relating these to their pedagogical context;

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  learning experiences of the educators: what worked and what did not work so well; and whether this is transferable to another context;

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  obstacles faced by students and educators, whether they are technological, usability-related, skills or training issues, or social issues;

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  accessibility issues regarding support to users with special needs, and how they are being addressed.

Some useful recommendations and guiding principles for educators and policy makers engaged in social software initiatives are offered including the pedagogical roles of social software: communication, nurturing creativity and innovation, and collaborative learning; but also the influencing factors that can enhance student learning and engagement.

The “digital natives” phenomena is critically examined by Thomas Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke in the context of transforming pedadogical demands in a newly emerging political economy. The impact of the shift to a knowledge society, where information and communication technology (ICT) and the widening spread of internationally distributed information are creating a “skill revolution”, as O’Hara (2007) suggest, there is a widening culture mismatch between what members of the knowledge society need to succeed and what current systems of higher education are geared to offer and to adequately prepare people and communities to thrive in the global knowledge society. Students need to master higher-order cognitive, affective, and social skills not central to mature industrial societies, but vital in a knowledge based economy that include “thriving on chaos” (making rapid decisions based on incomplete information to resolve novel situations); the ability to collaborate with a diverse team – face-to-face or across distance – to accomplish a task; creating, sharing, and mastering knowledge through filtering a sea of quasi-accurate information (Dede, 2005, 2008).

The emerging potential of ePortfolios is explored by Simon Housego and Nicola Parker. eProtfolios create an opportunity for combining together material from multiple sources, such as work produced by students in response to course-level assessment activities, records of extra-curricular activities, self assessment and more personal reflections into more coherent wholes that make visible and accessible richer and deeper accounts of students’ engagement in their studies and in life. The American Association for Higher Education refers to six principal purposes of ePortfolios based on educational planning; documenting learning, knowledge and skills; tracking programs; job hunting; course evaluation; and performance monitoring and evaluation at work. The argument of the paper is that ePortfolios are the latest in a long line of educational technologies with great promise providing a natural way to document attainment by students of graduate attributes, something which universities have often found hard to do.

Embedding of graduate attributes is a challenge because the default view for many teachers focuses on what teachers do, rather than on looking at the curriculum from the student viewpoint. Housego and Parker argue the most promising use of ePortfolios would be to develop a whole-of-program approach, rather than just leaving to individual teachers to decide for themselves what they might do. However, just because the technology is promising, doesn’t mean it will be taken up successfully across educational institutions. They suggest the implementation and take-up of learning management systems provides some interesting similarities and differences to what could happen with ePortfolios. Learning management systems uses are convergent (most teachers are using it in similar ways – lecture notes, announcements etc.) whereas ePortfolios are divergent, with very different trajectories of use (semester-based, subject level for LMS vs degree-length for ePortfolios, and therefore will need very different support structures.

The following two articles both pursue interesting aspects of technologically supported assessment. Andrew Stone and Mike Dearing examine a case study of the application of simulations in assessment. The simulations developed by the UK City & Guilds are authentic scenario-based replicas of word processing and spreadsheet software, which present a series of tasks that the test-taker completes by using the same functionality within the simulations as they would in the real applications. In this way the test-taker is able to demonstrate his or her information and communication technology competence. The simulation tests are deployed via the standard City & Guilds test delivery platform, with results passing through an application programming interface to the results processing environment, where formal certification is addressed and in-depth item analysis can be conducted. City and Guilds developed these simulations in response to the UK government’s commitment to an e-assessment strategy. City & Guilds’ activity in England was until 2008 regulated by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which published a position paper in 2004 outlining their intentions for e-assessment in the coming years. The key message of this paper was that where appropriate, examinations should be available onscreen as soon as the necessary development work could be completed. This new assessment regime is now well-established, popular with learners and generally recognised as a valid test of learners competence. Further work needs to be done to increase the validity of the assessment regime, but then the simulation assessement program will be rolled out across the UK, and other vocational domains investigated for the development of similar assessment techniques.

A novel approach to peer assessment is outlined by Darrell Thompson and Ian McGregor. There are many reasons why groupwork is regarded as an important part of contemporary teaching and learning, and this provides a vital contribution to developing useful work and life skills. However utilising groupwork as a major part of assessment is undermined by the fact that teachers are not in a position to accurately monitor the contributions of all group members in the vast majority of groupwork projects particularly in large classes. In educational systems where a percentage assessment mark is central to the calculation of grades and other awards, it would be beneficial to provide a fair and accurate way of adjusting the assessment of group tasks to reflect individuals’ contributions. Self and peer assessment for groupwork is a process whereby the students are given the responsibility to rate themselves and their peers according to the levels of contribution to the group task, using criteria that accurately describe the range of possible contributions. Through peer assessment the benefits of groupwork as a learning and teaching strategy seem to be enhanced, in part, by students understanding that they will be fairly treated in the assessment process. The responsibility that students exercised in the ratings process, implies that a more careful and reflective evaluation of their group engagement is achieved.

Describing business simulations as a “case study with the participants inside” Elizabeth Clarke presents a critical literature survey of the potential of this learning technology. The emphasis of the simulation learning environments is on running experiments, testing different strategies, and building a better understanding of key aspects of the real world. Many authors assert that using educational electronic web-based or software-based simulations to complement conventional teaching tools has the potential to enhance learning, attitudes and behaviours. However, as many of the findings on the educational merits of simulations are based on perceptions of learning as reported by participants and instructors and not objective assessments, it measures the affective not cognitive learning. Among the major challenges presented to the adopters of business simulations are: adapting flexibly to pedagogical change and professional development; developing and updating infrastructure; sustaining continuity of learning; meeting learners expectations; negotiating the role of the instructor and delivering appropriate learning spaces.

Explanations of the wide adoption of simulations in the educational system despite the mixed evidence regarding their efficacy are critically examined by Emmanuel Josserand and Thibaut Bardon. They employ a neo-institutional perspective to integrate the influence of the macro-environment in which simulation adoption and implementation occurs. They suggest that in certain educational contexts instructional practices can be adopted not only for pedagogical purposes but also in response to the pressures of the institutional environment in which they evolve. Josserand and Bardon offer three dimensions of institutional motivation and legitimacy, pedagogical motivation, and political motivation in terms of individual and collective actors’ personal interests. Their conclusion is that in all cases pedagogical benefits appear as a prerequisite to be satisfied rather than the core motivation in adoption and implementation, recommending a more pragmatic approach to implementing new educational technologies.

The application and integration of simulations in the business curriculum is explored by Hermens and Clarke. This paper explores the role of computer based business simulations in higher education as innovative tools of teaching and learning to enhance students’ practical understanding of real business problems. Whether the integration of business simulation technologies will enable significant innovation in teaching and learning and will significantly enhance the quality and efficiency of traditional management teaching and learning methods is examined. Previous research has established that simulations can be an effective integrative learning mechanism for the student participant seeking to understand management concepts, techniques and practices. A number of prominent training institutions have adopted simulations in order to increase business acumen, financial literacy and build competency. To achieve the required convergence of the business curriculum, we hypothesize that a broad-based integrative approach needs to be adopted to overcome the silo effect of supply driven disciplinary models, which have traditionally prevailed in business education.

Continuing with the critical analysis of the potential of simulations Robert Wood et al. suggest computer based simulations have been used extensively in the development of technical skills for relatively well-defined tasks, such as surgery, share trading and responding to crises. However attempts have been made to integrate simulations into the development of dynamic behavioural skills requiring behavioural skills to deal flexibly with real world tasks. The development of dynamic behavioural skills, such as leadership, differs from the development of more task specific technical skills in several ways that have direct implications for the effectiveness of simulations in training and development. Traditional, task specific simulations focus on the development of domain specific knowledge. The set of new leadership simulations in contrast aim at the development of greater levels of flexibility in the application of knowledge and the behavioural skills acquired in order to allow transfer across different simulations and into less well defined real world task settings. The structure of the simulation model is the representation of the variables, relationships, values, distributions, and any randomness of the internal processes in the task being simulated. The choice of the structure is based on data, prior knowledge and/or assumptions about the task being simulated (Goosen et al., 2001).

The utilization of simulations in training programs is far from being a novel idea, yet the authors argue this has not lived up to expectations that early work in this area promised. The authors suggest that if simulations are going to be used effectively for the development of dynamic skills such as leadership we need to go beyond their traditional use. The execution of leadership skills requires flexible expertise. The successful acquisition of rich schemata and versatile mental models as the goal of leadership development programs calls for instructional techniques that also facilitate the successful manifestation of flexible expertise. The authors argue that training programs are optimised when they manage cognitive load, delay automatisation of responses, and provide diversity in simulated experiences. When embedded in deliberative processing, application of knowledge developed though simulations and the creation of linkages to behavioural execution skills facilitates successful performance in complex and dynamic real world challenges.

Thomas ClarkeUniversity of Technology, Sydney, Australia