Addressing Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning in the Classroom: Experiences in Engineering Education

Abstract

Every day more and more persons are using notebooks or Tablet PCs to support educational activities. Several researchers have highlighted the contributions of these mobile computing devices as facilitators of the teaching-learning process [Alvarado, 2004; Hyden, 2005; Nguyen, 2007; Tront, 2007; Prey, 2007]. However, many other researchers have shown that computing devices, and particularly Internet, can be a distracting factor during the lectures. If they do not play a clear role, their use competes with the instructor’s speech, and frequently the computer wins [Resman, 2005; Adams, 2006; Wurst, 2008; Casas, 2009].

An alternative to deal with this problem is to redesign the lectures style to make it more active and participative, by assigning a clear role to laptops during classes. Including computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) activities seems to be a good idea, not only because the students feel comfortable with such activities [Bustos, 2009; Valdivia, 2009], but also because these activities have shown to get very interesting results [Martinez, 2002; Nguyen, 2003].

This chapter presents and discuses several CSCL activities that help delivering the knowledge in engineering courses at two traditional Chilean universities: Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. These activities have been used during the last years to deal with the problem of students’ distraction, because of the laptop use during lectures. The recurrent use of these CSCL activities and the results obtained in those experimental courses are showing these solutions could be representing good alternatives to deal with the stated problem. In addition, this chapter discusses the differences between laptops and Tablet PCs, as supporting tool for CSCL activities.