Abstract:

Co-learning also named collaborative learning is a method of learning and teaching in which learners team together to explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. A group of learners working together over the Internet on a shared assignment of creating a blog is an example of virtual co-learning environment (Aramo-Immonen et al. 2015; Volpentesa et al. 2012). According to Järvenpää et al. (2004) virtual team member's trust in his/her team operates as a moderator, indirectly affecting the relationships between team communication and perceptual learning outcomes. Therefore we first executed team building exercises in virtual teams. Secondly we instructed students to use blogging tools and create own blog pages. Thirdly we executed a survey among students assessing the learning experiences in such a virtual co-learning environment.

We have experimented blogging as a co-learning environment among university students in international course context. These experimentations were conducted among group of 39 students enrolled in international knowledge management graduate course. We observed team building in virtual teams via team building exercises (Järvenpää et al. 2004). We assessed the content of blog pages and conducted a survey at the end of the course. In suggested paper we discuss the co-learning in virtual teams, introduce the result from the survey questionnaire and introduce live links to some example blog pages.

References:
[1] Aramo-Immonen, H., Jussila, J., Huhtamäki, J. (2015) Exploring co-learning behavior of conference participants with visual network analysis of Twitter data. Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 51, Part B, October 2015, Pages 1154-1162.
[2] Järvenpää, S. L., Shaw, T. R., and Staples, S. D., (2004) The Role of Trust in Global Virtual Teams. Information Systems Research 15(3), pp. 250–267.
[3] Volpentesa, A.P., Ammirato, S., Sofo, S. (2012) Collaborative Design Learning and Thinking Style Awareness. International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 948–958.

Keywords:

Blog, virtual team, co-learning, learning environment, higher education.