| Collaborative Learning This
page includes examples of Web-enabled collaborative learning from
 Architecture and
Landscape Architecture
Visions
for a Sustainable City
Michael Stern, University of Virginia, and Neal Payton, Catholic Unversity of
America, LAR702 (Town Planning in Post-Suburban America), University of Virginia
This collaborative project focuses on Owings Mills, Maryland, as a case study of urban
design in the suburban context. Owings Mills is seen as especially relevant in
exemplifying the phenomenon of "edge cities"—new decentralized urban
developments concentrated around highway interchanges surrounding older central cities (in
this case, Baltimore). Six student teams, consisting of graduate students of landscape
architecture from the University of Virginia and graduate and undergraduate students of
architecture from Catholic University of America, are asked to develop an urban design
master plan for the Owings Mills Town Center. The goal of the assignment is to produce
specific design solutions that integrate urban and natural systems into a habitable public
landscape. The students keep in contact via e-mail and online conferencing, and they
publish their reports and master plans on the course Web site. The assignment and the master plans it produced suggest ways of using the Web to share
information and resources among groups as well as to create a comprehensive overview of
key issues in town planning and urban development.
This project was conducted in 1995 with the help of the Institute for Advanced
Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at the University of Virginia, where it now
resides; it was then and still is an excellent example of using Web-based media to teach
practitioner knowledge and skills in a professional field.
This example features the use of text and images.
Anthropology
Museums
and Social Science
Raymond Bucko, S.J., Anthropology 305 (Museums and Social Science), Le Moyne
College
This course examines how social theory has influenced the development of museums, their
evolution as institutions responsive to cultural sensibilities, and the social meanings
associated with the definition of collections and the arrangement of artifacts. Students
are asked to work in teams and examine how social theory is involved in creating displays
in museums they visit. The assignments involve actual visits to physical museums as well
as perusal of online museums and exhibits; a significant portion of the term project
requires that they create a virtual museum Web site with a catalogue text that reflects
the theoretical underpinnings of the objects they are reviewing.
The course and its assignments suggest ways that students can use the information about
museums presented on their Web sites to access and interrogate the philosophies and
purposes behind them. In addition, having to co-present virtual museum Web sites
encourages a collaborative approach to knowledge formation.
This example features the use of Web sites, text, images, and downloaded media.
Political Science
Digital Agora's Political Byte Newsstand
Political Science Department, Acadia University
The Digital
Agora is a multimedia resource providing eight political science courses at Acadia
University with extensive online materials and tools for interactive learning. The
Political Byte Newsstand is the central page for online student newspapers associated with
different courses. Here, students and student teams post class assignments in the form of
editorials, essays, feature columns, and reports. Each course has one newspaper, and its
contents are styled according to that course's topic and requirements. Class assignments
are published in these newspapers, which are available at any one time to all eight
classes as well as to the general public. Visitors to this site get a rich sense of the
assignments to which students are responding; they can also see how the opportunity to
post assignments as publications enhances knowledge and skill development.
The Digital Agora, especially its Political Byte Newsstand, is designed to facilitate
intra- and inter-institutional, computer-mediated collaborative learning. As stated in the
site
synopsis, the emphasis is on "everyone learning, and everyone contributing,"
and it is easily seen that work for course requirements in the Digital Agora goes far
beyond traditional student-professor exchanges.
Further examples on this site from the Digital Agora appear in Conceptual Learning and in Data
Gathering and Synthesis.
This example features the use of databases
and scripts.
Local History
Pictorial
Tour of the 1890s in Bowling Green, Ohio
William Grant, The American 1890s, American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State
University
Bowling Green in the 1890s earned the sobriquet of "The Beautiful Crystal
City" due to its glassmaking factories and a thriving local economy. This project was
begun in 1996 as part of a graduate American Culture Studies seminar aimed at introducing
students to the use of HTML for scholarly purposes. After an introductory HTML assignment
in which students composed an encyclopedic entry for The American
1890s: A Chronology, the seminar was broken into working groups and each group was
assigned to a quadrant of central Bowling Green to develop the materials that would
eventually be unified into the Crystal City site. The project focuses on the architectural
heritage of Bowling Green, researching the surviving historical buildings and their
builders, owners, and tenants so as to link the cultural and social history of Bowling
Green to the contemporary city.
The Crystal City site suggests ways in which ongoing collaborative Web projects can
serve the needs of faculty and departments using the built environment as a resource in
teaching history and culture.
This example features the use of text and images.
This project is a joint initiative of the Center for the Virtual University and the Center for Teaching and Learning
at UMUC.
© 1996-2005 University of Maryland University College
3501 University Blvd. East
Adelphi, Maryland 20783 USA
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