Computer-Mediated Group Projects: Facilitating Collaborative Learning with the World Wide Web

Abstract

We present the use of the World Wide Web (Web) to facilitate collaborative group work in 2 teaching environments: high school and graduate school. In the first case, high school students (N = 19) participating in a university minicourse worked in small groups for 25 hr conducting research and preparing a report on the Web. In the second case, psychology graduate students (N = 8) used personal Web sites for their seminar work. We found that the Web environment facilitated group work by providing (a) clear demarcations of individual members' contributions, (b) a structure for group members' participation, (c) easy access to group members' contributions, (d) individual work space, and (e) commensurable resources for each group member.

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