Insights into the use and affordances of social and collaborative applications for student projects
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Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists
Abstract
The use of social and collaborative computing has the potential of assisting learning and improving the ability to work
together as part of a team. Team work is a graduate attribute that students need to acquire before transitioning from
university into the workplace. The aim of this exploratory research was to provide insights into the use of social and
collaborative applications by Computer Science students, and the emergent affordances student project teams have
created with the use of these applications. It answers the questions: What elearning platforms or applications do students
use to collaborate for team projects? What technology affordance draws students to use these applications? This study
adopts affordance theory as the theoretical framework. Two types of content analysis: conventional content analysis and
summative content analysis were used to analyse the data. Data was gathered using a pre-designed questionnaire with
the teams during the first semester of 2016. Findings show that the university’s elearning platform is utilised for some of
their courses; however students seem to prefer free and open source platforms. Student project teams used applications
such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Docs, as well as email messages, to work jointly, and were
successfully able to complete their team projects. Four types of technology affordances: communicative-affordance,
document share-affordance, course resource-affordance, and integrity-affordance, were identified as being relevant.
Description
Keywords
Collaborative elearning, Technology affordance, Content analysis, Graduate attributes, Team project
Citation
Bankole, O.O. & Venter, I.M. (2017). Insights into the use and a ffordances of social and collaborative applications for student projects. South African Computer Journal, 29(2)