This semester another instructor and I are going to attempt "across-section" collaboration on projects. For a large project pairs or threesomes of students from his writing section will collaborate with pairs from my section of a technical writing course. The goal is to have students experience online collaboration similar to an all-online course, but with with an extensive safety net.

Anyone else work with a colleague to create virtual teams? What worked and what didn't?

I know this isn't "ready for primetime" by any stretch of the imagination, but if you missed C&W or for whatever reason wanted to see the video I prepared, here's the link.

On the official course evaluation form at my school, students tick a box that indicates whether the course involved group work. I get to tick off a separate box, in which I indicate whether I think group work is important for the course, but seeing that box there semester after semester naturally makes me think of more ways to do group work.

Hello, kairosnewsers:

I am working on a research project which involves learning about methods of assessing the effectiveness of e-learning tools, particularly socially-collaborative and "informal" learning tools. I am thinking community blogs, wikis, virtual worlds and such as well as platforms that combine all of the above and perhaps others. In other words, I am not interested in the type of electronic behemoths which are focusing on grammar drills and which are put out by all the textbook publishers. Here are some questions that I'd need to answer:

--design effectiveness