A CASE STUDY ON THE USE OF COLLABORATIVE TOOLS AND VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AS A LEARNING STRATEGY

Collaborative work is gaining visibility as a good practice in today`s market because of the advantage associated to this new way of work. Taking into consideration the actual technological stage of our society, many organizations and educational institutions are increasingly taking ownership of this kind of work in their productive processes, especially in learning activities, just because of its benefits, mainly when referring to the dimensions of time and space. Those dimensions of time and space change drastically the perception among the members of a working team. In today’s world, to work in a collaborative manner requires some prerequisites and organization structure that is quietly different from the face to face work. In this context, using a systemic view of collaborative working environment, this article frames collaborative work analyzing several aspects of it, including the collaborative work concept, collaborative tools, characteristics of the collaborative work and differences between face to face and collaborative work. In order to analyze a real experience of a collaborative work environment, a group of students from a master program of a Higher Federal Technological Institution – Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica Celso Suckow da Fonseca - CEFET/RJ was commissioned to develop an activity just using collaborative tools. The experience was repeated in two consecutive years, in which, each class was able to select a specific project to be developed. In order to report the students’ experience, a questionnaire related to personnel, management and technological aspects of collaborative work was applied. In this context, this article searches to identify, analyze and document the practical experience related to the group of students that worked on the projects.