Case Study 2: Dialogue: European Landscape Architecture
From Taxonomy
Online Seminar from October 2007 to January 2008
The objective of the second seminar was to focus on various core issues of landscape architecture. The selected themes were:
- Genius Loci - The Spirit of the Place
- Water in the Urban Context blog
- Vegetation and the Time Factor blog
- Materials and the Time Factor blog
- Public Participation blog
In addition, a professional practice presentation by Prof. Rainer Schmidt and an authors’ symposium of the fall issue of the Journal of Landscape Architecture were included. The sessions were organised regularly at 18 p.m. CET on Wednesdays using the VITERO virtual meeting room. Expert presentations on the seminar themes alternated with small group parallel sessions.
Contents |
Focus on Collaboration
Based on the experiences gained in the previous semester this seminar aimed to increase student participation. Therefore, the sessions were organised as a mix of plenary meetings in the VITERO main room and small group discussions in parallel breakout rooms.
The small groups were formed at the beginning of the seminar with respect to the different seminar themes. The group task was to develop an online essay which should reflect the respective seminar theme from different national perspectives. The internationally composed groups thus worked asynchronously by using a thematic weblog and synchronously in the breakout rooms of the VITERO meeting system. Moreover, a collaboration script was given to each group in order to scaffold the working process. The script was available as a PDF file on each weblog. However, the most important procedural steps were repeated by e-mail and in form of weblog posts by the seminar coordinator in order to increase students’ awareness. In addition, each group was accompanied by a tutor whose main function was to support and observe the work process.
The seminar was attended by 23 students from 8 different institutions. Some students had a visitors’ status.
The collaboration processes is supported by a script and leads to a joint deliverable: an online essay
Content Development Process
The assignment for the small group was based on a constructivist learning model, which should integrate individual prior knowledge and new knowledge generated by the group. The process was composed of interactive and reflective parts starting with an individual task. At the beginning each group member was asked to present a design project from his or her personal background. This project should relate to the working group theme / example from the vegetation group. The project was documented on the respective weblog and presented to the group in parallel sessions in the VITERO meeting room. The second phase aimed at leading students from their personal examples to a more general consideration of the theme. Therefore, the groups were asked to indentify core questions. These questions should both relate to the theme in general and be visible in the examples compiled. After agreement the questions were then distributed again among the group members. The following individual task was to answer the question with respect to the different national examples. In doing so, students should apply analytical skills by comparing the different national approaches with respect to a particular aspect. Furthermore, interaction in the group should be stimulated because the knowledge of other group members was required for completing the task.
From the instructor’s perspective it needs to be said that the first phase -dedicated to activating and communicating prior knowledge- was completed satisfyingly, though not within an adequate timing by all participants. This relates to a general problem generated by the different curricular backgrounds of the participants: some were much more actively involved than others. Consequently, deliverables were not completed at the same time which led to conflicts in the second phase, in which analytical skills should have been activated. A second factor was the abstract nature of the task and the divergences between the students’ case-studies. This divergence was a latent risk of the seminar from the beginning since no particular restrictions on the selection of examples were given to the students. It was expected that the freedom to choose would stimulate the participants’ prior knowledge in the best way. In addition, some students were repeatedly confronted with technical problems which had a negative impact on the synchronous communication. Due to these circumstances, which deserve more consideration in future seminars, the second phase required strong external impact. Finally, the seminar coordinator was forced to propose a set of questions which was not originally intended.
The Idea of the Collaboration Script
Collaboration scripts aim to structure learning processes in groups. They typically predefine sequences of activities, tasks, deadlines and roles. There is a pricipal disctinction between internal and external scripts. The internal scipt refers to an individual's cognitive structure whereas the external script is a paedagogical actifact. According to Dillenbourg, Fischer et al. external scripts improve learning in a computer-supported collaborative context. This is because individuals enter a learning context with many distinct "internalised" collaboration methods. Due to reduced communication possibilities in online environments a productive combination of these individual skills can become very difficult. An external script can thus support group processes by providing meta information on the collaboration process itself. However, Dillenbourg has frequently mentioned the danger of "over-scripting" in this context. A detailed script can easily become counterproductive because it will interfere with an individual's internal script. The challenge for instruction is thus finding the right balance between the two.
In this context a collaboration script was given to the seminar small groups in form of a word document indicating the main processes of the seminar task as a whole. Further, prompts were communicated per e-mail and posted on the weblog to keep the participants on track with current tasks. There was no IT-driven scripting such as online queries.
The participants' opinions on the question whether they have been aware of the script were divided: 10 answered with "yes" and 13 answered with "no".
Evaluation
This seminar was evaluated with an online survey after completion. The response was quite high, 20 of 24 students answered the questions. Similar to the previous seminar many students were confronted with technical obstacles, altogether two thirds of the participants have been facing problems. However, answers to the question "The seminar content was interesting and you gained new knowledge?" were positive (A: Yes, absolutey (8), B: This was mostly the case (11), C: The contents were of average interest (4), D: Most contents were not interesting (0)).
Use of the weblog:
The majority (16) of the participants agreed that the weblog was useful. The actual use of the blogs was analysed according to participants' visits, publications and comments. The figure below gives a summary of the students' answers. It shows that the passive use of the weblog (visiting) was more frequent than contributing actively in form of posts and comments. Particularly comments were only rarely used which may be an indicator for weak awareness of others' contributions.
Tutors' Observations
Links
References
Carmien, S., Kollar, I., Fischer, G., and F. Fischer. "The interplay of internal and external scripts." Scripting Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. Ed. F. et at. Fischer. : Springer, 2007. 303-326.
Dillenbourg, P., and P. Tchounikine. "Flexibility in macro-scripts for computer-supported collaboration." Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 23 (2007): 1-13.
Dillenbourg, P., and P. Jermnann. "Designing interactive Scripts." Scripting Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. Ed. F. et al. Fischer. : Springer, 2007. 275-300.
Fischer, Frank. Scripting computer-supported collaborative learning : cognitive, computational and educational perspectives. Vol. 6. : New York : Springer Science, Business Media, LLC, 2007, 2007.
