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Providing Behaviour Awareness in Collaborative Project Courses

TitleProviding Behaviour Awareness in Collaborative Project Courses
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2016
AuthorsMedina, E, Meseguer, R, Ochoa, SF, Medina, H
JournalJournal of Universal Computer Science
Volume22
Issue10
Pagination1319–1338
AbstractSeveral studies show that awareness mechanisms can contribute to enhance the collaboration process among students and the learning experiences during collaborative project courses. However, it is not clear what awareness information should be provided to whom, when it should be provided, and how to obtain and represent such information in an accurate and understandable way. Regardless the research efforts done in this area, the problem remains open. By recognizing the diversity of work scenarios (contexts) where the collaboration may occur, this research proposes a behaviour awareness mechanism to support collaborative work in undergraduate project courses. Based on the authors previous experiences and the literature in the area, the proposed mechanism considers personal and social awareness components, which represent metrics in a visual way, helping students realize their performance, and lecturers intervene when needed. The trustworthiness of the mechanisms for determining the metrics was verified using empirical data, and the usability and usefulness of these metrics were evaluated with undergraduate students. Experimental results show that this awareness mechanism is useful, understandable and representative of the observed scenarios.
URLhttp://www.jucs.org/jucs_22_10/providing_behaviour_awareness_in
DOI10.3217/jucs-022-10-1319