Abstract:

Higher Education systems in many countries are facing a transformation process aimed at responding to new social demands. In an increasingly complex and technological world, competent professional for information management, knowledge transfer and problem solving are required. Moreover, individuals are asked to be able to keep on learning and updating throughout their lives, making it necessary to ensure the acquisition of autonomous learning skills. There is also an emphasis on the promotion of collaborative work as an essential training for future integration in specialized and interdisciplinary professional networks, as well as a mean to elicit the development of social abilities and negotiation skills.

Far from feeling in the hands of market, educators should face this transformation process as a chance to review and improve outdated syllabus and methodologies in the search of more efficient learning processes. From this perspective, we present an educational experience aimed at engaging students in their own knowledge construction trying to promote responsible, autonomous and self-reflective learners, as well as individuals able to debate, negotiate and address collaborative compromises.

The teachers involved in the present experience have taken advantage of information and communication technologies (ICT) to design and carry out an instructional process where students are asked to develop a monographic document in a collaborative way. The institutional virtual learning environment has been used to provide supporting documents and materials, as well as a teaching resource to orient, monitor and evaluate the whole process. E-forums have been created for each group to facilitate communication, information exchange and debate among group members. From the beginning students are given clear instructions including a schedule to facilitate time management and planning, and guidelines for monographic contents and format.

The designed collaborative process involves the assumption of both, individual and group tasks. Any member is initially responsible for the development of a subtopic related to the monographic project. In order to do so they will have to search, manage and select relevant information to elaborate an attractive proposal to be studied and evaluated by the rest of the group. Emphasis is placed on the accuracy and quality of the information resources utilized by the students.

Assessment criteria are also available. Furthermore, students are asked to apply an instrument designed for self and peer evaluation. The purpose is to promote feed-back between group members and the exchange of opinions and points of view about the parts carried out by others. Therefore, the final product developed by the group, rather than being just the mere addition of individual tasks, intends to be the result of mutual revision and enrichment.

Finally, we think that the instructional approach described in the present work may be a useful or inspiring experience for anyone interested in promoting general competence acquisition, such as information management and collaborative work, supported by ICT.

Keywords:

computer supported collaborative learning, cscl, ict competences, social.