JOURNAL REVIEW ABOUT:

DO STUDENTS AND LECTURERS ACTIVELY USE COLLABORATION

TOOLS IN LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?
Nastaran ZANJANI, Shaun NYKVIST& Shlomo GEVA
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
*s.nykvist@qut.edu.au
Introduction
As a reader, I find out that this research is a general topic about what exactly are
the collaborative tools that has been used in learning management system (LMS).
It give us ideas about the effectiveness of LMS and whether lectures and students
really used collaborative tools for teaching and learning process. As Endeshaw
(2015) said, learning depends on teaching instructions. So, what is the best method
educator can used to optimize the teaching learning process? Cavus (2007)
research showed a higher success rate when an LMS system is combined with an
advanced collaborative tool during the teaching of programming languages in a
Web-based environment.
Nowadays, students use technology in natural ways that allow them to do
what they want: communicate with anyone they want, in the time and space that
suits them best. Easily accessible and user-friendly, collaboration tools allow
students to explore, share, engage, and connect with people and content in
meaningful ways that help them learn. By relying on the familiar ways students
use these tools, faculty can enable new forms of communication and engagement
in the classroom, permitting extensions and variations of the informal interactions
already occurring in classrooms and hallways, and creating new frontiers for
collaboration across geographic boundaries (Lomas et al., 2008).
Research Area and Research Questions
The researchers main purpose in this study was to investigate how collaboration
tools can be used with Blackboard for teaching and learning process at a major
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Australian University. This research also explored the factors that influence the
usage of collaboration tools in LMS. Some of the best known commercially
available LMS systems are Blackboard, WebCT, and Desire2Learn. There are also
many open-source and free LMS systems, such as Moodle, Segue, Interact,
CourseWork, Atutor, KEWL and several others (Cavus et. al., 2006). However,
only Blackboard become a focus in this study. Thus, one of the the limitations in
this study is it only can be conducted in a university that used Blackboard for five
years.
Methodology
Both quantitative and qualitative method were used in this study. From the
researcher point of view, this mix-methods is the best approach to find a holistic
view of the problem to be generated and provides in depth analysis about the
research problem. The researcher used open-ended interviews and statistics to give
us better understanding of the research. The participants were informed of the
study through emails sent to each of the faculties and they individually volunteered
and gave full consent to participate in the study.
In this research, the participants (N=67) of the study consisted of both
teaching staff (n=9) and students (n=58) from the faculties of Science and
Technology, Law, Business and Health, all studying at the university where the
study was conducted. Participants who volunteered to be a part of the study were
of varying ages and of mixed sex. Interviews were focused on the way students
and lecturers use the collaboration tools of Blackboard and were open ended in
nature. The number of participants interviewed was brought to an end once a
saturation point had been reached where no new data was collected from
participants. The researchers demonstrated that saturation often occurs within the
first twelve interviews and that this is sufficient to obtain a reliable conclusion. The
participants interviewed in this study were 67.
In Ballou (2007) research, open-ended interviews gives the subjects more
freedom in crafting an answer but it also increases the cognitive effort. Without
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answer choices as cues to aid in understanding the question and deciding on an

answer, the subject has to perform additional cognitive tasks before he or she
responds. Thus, it will make the subjects tiring easily. Reja et al. (2003) research
results also shows that open-ended questions produce more missing data than
close-ended. The research also adds that there were more inadequate answers for
open-ended question. My suggestion is when doing the open-ended interviews;
explicit wording should be given so the reliability and trustworthiness of a research
cannot be speculating.
As for the quantitative method, the total participants of the study (N=67)
are a bit low. This researchs result could be question by other researchers because
it cannot be used for generalization even thought the quantitative data are taken
from the Blackboards usage record for three years. The focus group from the
faculties of Science and Technology, Law, Business and Health, all studying at the
university where the study was conducted maybe will disturb the credibility of this
research. Terhanian and Bremer (2012) stated in their research that once
particular quota groups have been filled, potential respondents
who would have otherwise qualified for the survey would be
turned away. This means, other students from other faculties can
become the potential and more credibility respondents than the
focus group especially if the research only involving a few
participants. However, because of the standard quota sampling,
this kind of respondents may turn away by the researcher.
Findings and Discussion
The mix-methods used in this research give two sources of data, which are
discussed in simple writing. The first source of data is from the interviews. In these
interviews, the researchers find the factors that affect the usage of collaboration
tools and divided it into six main categories; structure and user experience,
availability of time, preference for other tools, lack of knowledge about tools,
pedagogical practice and response time.

The first category is about the structure and user experience. In the
discussion, the researchers find that the Blackboard is difficult to use and
redundant procedures or in another term not user-friendly. To paraphrase Arthur
C. Clarke, good technology should allow individuals to do what they want
naturally. Its use should be driven by the needs of individuals. Ideally, it should
allow users to extend the boundaries of what they are able to achieve and, at the
very least, help people to perform better. In my opinion, the interface of the tool
should be easy and intuitive to navigate, perhaps emulating an existing tool or an
aspect of the physical world. A users ability to simply pick up, adapt to, and use
the tool considerably will diminish extensive training and supervision needs thus
boost the uses of the tool.
The second category is availability of time that means participants
indicated they cannot manage the time because of other tasks. The researchers used
one of the statements from the students that stated I have no time to do this,
because you have to spend a lot of time to understand how to set up them [the
forums] (S-6) to support their findings. However, in my opinion, this category
should not exist because that statement also can be referring to the first category,
which is the structure and user experience. The third category is preference for
other tools such as Skype and MSN Messenger. As I stated before, collaboration
tools that already exist should be take advantage because it can diminish the
training time. The fourth category is focusing on lack of knowledge about the tools
especially the functions, which limit their knowledge about how beneficial
collaboration tools such as Blackboard for their study.
Nonetheless, the fifth category is the 50% traditional pedagogical practice
of the lecturers that eventually cutback the usage of the collaboration tools. As we
all know, habits are difficult to change so this also become crucial factors in this
study. Lastly, the sixth category is the response time or the length of time the
students had to wait to receive a response. Time consuming discouraged the
students to maximize the uses of the collaboration tools in Blackboard. Hence, this
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research only shows us the disadvantageous of the collaboration tools especially

within the Blackboard in LSM.
As for the quantitative data, the research only relate the average time that
students in the entire university spent with Blackboard over a three year period
from 2001 until 2012. From the statistical data, the researchers find a decline in the
use of these collaboration tools. In Caves et. al. (2006) research, E-learning
suppose to become new approach for the teaching and learning process because the
participants in LSM are more motivated, self-directed and achieve more than
participants in traditional classrooms.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the researchers stated that mere collaborative tools in LMS such as
Blackboard does not equate as them successfully use in teaching and learning
purposes. In the other hand, they also stated that most educators and students still
not realised the full potential of the collaborative tools in education especially in
this globalisation time. As for this research, I recommend that this research should
be conducted in the entire university by using a survey to make the statistical data
more accurate, more credible and more reliable.

REFERENCES
Cavus N. 2007. Assessing The Success Rate Of Students Using A Learning
System Together With A Collaborative Tool In Web-based Teaching
Of Programming Languages. Journal Educational Computing
Research, Vol. 36(3) 301-321, 2007.
Cavus N., Uzunboylu H. and Ibrahim D. 2006. The Effectiveness Of Using
Learning Management Systems And Collaborative Tools in Web-Based
rd

Teaching Of Programming Languages. 3 International Symposium and

Education on Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering (ISEECE
2006), 23-25 November, 2006, Near East University, Lefkosa, Cyprus.

Aragaw Delele Endeshaw. The Effect of Cooperative Learning on Students Efl

ReadingComprehension: Meshentie Grade Nine High School Students in
Focus. Education Journal. Vol. 4, No. 5, 2015, pp. 222-231.doi:
10.11648/j.edu.20150405.16
Lomas C., Burke M. and Page C. L. 2008. Collaboration Tools. ELI Paper 2:
2008.
Reja U., Manfreda K.L., Hlebec V. and Vehovar V. 2003. Open-ended vs Closeended

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Questionnaires.

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Statistics. Anuka Ferligoj and Andrej Mrvar (Editors) Metodoloki

zvezki,
Terhanian G. and Bremer J. 2012. A Smarter Way to Select Respondents For
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Yanfang Wei, Yaohui Wu, Zheng Zheng. The Application of Sakai in University
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APPENDIX A

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