Fostering collaboration amongst off-campus students

Abstract

While the importance of developing and giving feedback on generic skills is widely recognised for on-campus students, this is still largely ignored for off-campus students, primarily due to the practical difficulties involved. This paper reports on a pilot project that introduced a compulsory group work project into an off-campus unit, delivered through Open Universities Australia. Wikis were used as the technical tool to facilitate the project, which was mostly successful for students, albeit stressful and time-consuming for staff. While all participating students successfully completed group projects, only one group demonstrated high levels of collaboration during the process.