Group Collaboration in the Virtual Classroom


     Deborah Barreau, Cindy Tonnesen, Kim McGoff, Cheryl Eslinger



                            Abstract

     The university classroom of the future may bear little
     resemblance to the instructor-centered environments common
     today.  Distance education has been part of university
     curricula in the form of correspondence and telecourses in
     the past, but the maturity and affordability of such
     technologies as interactive compressed video and electronic
     mail offer the potential for highly interactive, student-
     centered learning environments which are as satisfying and
     engaging as "being there."  This environment is established,
     in the view of one professor, through successful
     collaboration among students who are actively engaged in the
     construction of "something meaningful and substantial."* 
     This paper is an evaluation of computer science course,
     "Virtual Reality, Telepresence and Beyond," offered to
     graduate students, both on- and off-site at the University
     of Maryland in the fall of 1993.  The evaluation addresses
     the question of what makes a collaboration successful,
     assembling data from student surveys, class observations, a
     student journal, and electronic mail to test hypotheses that
     students who are more actively involved in collaborating on
     class projects will report a more satisfying experience than
     those who were not, and suggests there will be no significant
     difference in satisfaction based upon whether the student is
     enrolled locally or remotely.  However, it is suggested that
     the use of interactive, compressed video will enhance the
     sense of presence of remote students over more traditional
     forms of distance learning.


     *Ben Shneiderman, Professor, Department of Computer Science,