Design Recommendations for Successful Cross-university Collaborative Group Work: Two Best Practices Cases

摘要

The ability to work in decentralised, location-independent, international teams using collaborative information and communication technology (ICT) has become an essential key competence for the vocational capability of knowledge workers all over the world. Nevertheless, curricular contents in higher education do not yet reflect the development of these key competencies to an extent commensurate with their crucial importance. Concrete best practice application cases and design recommendations are lacking, especially in a cross-university context. The aim of this paper is therefore to introduce the concept of virtual collaborative learning (VCL) and compare two concrete application cases of cross-university VCL-arrangements in formal learning settings in order to create a design framework and to derive concrete design recommendations. The multi-perspective evaluations of the presented cases show that successful cross-university VCL concepts are characterized by the e-tutorial support of group work, transparent learning objectives and evaluation criteria, the selection of relevant, realistic and job related topics and assignments, the intensive participation of the learners, formative feedback as well as learning analytics. Based on lessons learned during the cross-university online collaborations concrete design measures for the implementation of cross university VCL courses are derived.