TEACHER STUDENTS' ENGAGEMENT IN A COLLABORATIVE INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LEARNING

Our purpose was to gain an in-depth fine grain look at the 72 teacher students of three universities (Australia, Chile and England) experience of working in an international virtual group using a ‘wiki’. Students worked in 17 groups of four or six, with two students from each university.
They resolved the question: what is an effective learning environment for students in our contemporary world? given five dot points in their answer agreed by all group members.
The project lasted three weeks. There were student assistants in English language to Chilean students. The research questions were: What was the students’ experience of working and learning in an international virtual space? What approaches to learning did the students adopt? How technology works when students learn about learning? How they engage and work within the construction knowledge task?
Data collection included wiki transcript, the reflective journals and a final survey.
The analysis shows that one group never engages on the task; eleven groups achieve only a part of the task, without collaboration, and only five groups achieve the whole task, working together. Although there was several collaborative experiences, all students values the opportunity for talking and sharing with another cultures.