Teaching development grants final and financial report: Improving students’ ability in using web-based technology for group projects

Web technologies (especially social media technologies) are known to be appropriate for collaborative content sharing and editing. Thus, they have been increasingly used in education for supporting students’ group work. Despite their usefulness, they seem not to be welcomed by students. Possible reasons include lack of time, information overload, unfamiliarity of technology, misuse of technology, and social obstacles. This project therefore aims at improving students’ ability in using web technology for conducting their group work. Of all the available online technologies, the wiki is chosen for the project. Pertaining to education, a wiki is able to help students work on a collaborative environment and track work in progress, and to assist teachers to check how much each student in a group has contributed. In this project, students will learn how to use the technology and demonstrate their understanding by applying it in a target group assignment. They will be assessed with the Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation framework. In this framework, four levels of assessment (i.e., reaction, learning, behavior, and results) will be conducted. Based on the assessment results, insights can be drawn for improving teaching and learning (in particular, e-learning in this project) and the provision of the technology.