A study of asynchronous and synchronous collaboration between subjects for the production of educational material

Abstract

This study seeks to determine the work process of subjects collaborating asynchronously and synchronously as well as to evaluate the impact on the production of educational material from such collaboration. Twenty-one subjects participated in an experiment, of which 7 worked asynchronously and by themselves and 14 worked synchronously in dyads. Their task consisted in producing a 1-1.5 hours learning exercise on usability testing for students present in a classroom, with the possibility of using a collection of educational material, repositories and external sources. They were videotaped while working and interviewed after the experiment. The principal results are as follows: both groups of subjects often repurposed exercises and others' educational materials placed at their disposal rather than simply reusing them; both groups reused others' material, either totally or partially, and in the latter case, they reused the structure, the content, or the concept; both groups produced exercises comprising more than one educational activity; and the exercises produced by subjects working asynchronously displayed a content-driven strategy while those produced by subjects working synchronously displayed an activity/practice-driven strategy. Moreover, within-group and between-group differences could be observed in the scanning and use of others' materials. These results entail consequences on the way a collaborative technology, such as a shared repository, should be organized, and on the choice of a mode of collaboration for the production of educational material.