A Structured Approach to Online Collaboration: Reflections of Pre-Service Teachers.

Online learning is a popular way for pre-service teachers to gain their professional qualifications in New Zealand. Increasingly, this online learning involves varying degrees of collaboration between students who do not meet face-to-face. This case study explored an aspect of an online course within the Graduate Diploma of Teaching Primary at Victoria University of Wellington. The first aim of this case was to appraise a structured approach devised to facilitate a collaborative group assignment, and the second aim was to use student reflections to evaluate the impact of collaboration for individual learning in an online environment. Emergent themes from the student reflections showed that individuals respond differently to collaboration; collaboration has an impact on individual learning; and community supports learning. This case study shows that successful collaboration can be developed through a purposeful structure that supports learning at each step of the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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