The premise for the development of this learning design was that the application of activity-based processes that required students to participate with one another in focused discussions on a bulletin board, would result in improved outcomes for student learning. Also, this planned approach to the use of collaborative learning activities on bulletin boards was designed to allow the teacher to adopt the role of facilitator rather than the constant monitor.

The Jigsaw approach was first developed by Elliot Aronson in 1978 (Aronsom, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, & Snapp, 1978) and has been adapted to achieve a number of objectives. One main strength of this approach is its ability to develop interdependence among students. According to Kagan (1992:18:3) the ‘Jigsaw can be used in a variety of ways for a variety of goals’. The main goals that we want to achieve are to develop interdependence, to develop skills of autonomous learning and for students to develop a knowledge base for teaching and learning through group projects.

One model that the designers found useful for conceptualising appropriate online activities is the constructivist framework developed by Engestrom and Cole (1993, cited in Owen 2000: 4) building on the work of Vygotsky and developed to understand ‘distributed knowledge as cultural-historic activity system’ (Owen 2000: 4). The model has subsequently been adapted by Hewitt (2001) for use in ‘The Activity Theory model for designing a Knowledge-Building Community’.

In addition, the work of Kagan (1992), and Bruffee (1999), on interdependence and independence was central to the design as was that of Kearney (1997, cited in Muirhead 2000) on active and self-directed learning online.

References:

Aronson, E., Blaney, N., Stephan, C., Sikes, J., Snapp, M. (1978). The jigsaw classroom, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Bruffee, K.A. (1999). Collaborative learning, Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London.

Hewitt, J. (2001). Fostering a Knowledge-Building Community in a Knowledge Classroom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research association, April, Seattle.

Kagan, S. (1992). Cooperative Learning, Kagan Cooperative Learning, San Juan Capistrano, CA.

Muirhead, B. (2000). Enhancing Social Interaction in Computer-Meditated Distance Education. Educational Technology & Society, 3 (4).

Owen, M. (2000). Paradigms for curriculum design: The Design of Reflective, Situated, Collaborative Professional Development Supported by Virtual Learning Environments. EURODL: http://kurs.nks.no/eurodl/eurodlen/index.html.

ORIGIN OF THE LEARNING DESIGN
The aim was for the teacher to provide the scaffolding rather than directing the process during the online tasks. We would argue that task-directed discussions (Lee et.al 1998 cited in Stenning et.al 1999: 3) provide the opportunity for the teacher to adopt a less stressful role and require the students to participate in a structured, process-oriented methodology, which will develop their skills to conduct and to drive the process themselves.

The task design provided initial direction and scaffolding with a gradual reduction by the teacher of this support over the following weeks. A key issue for the Online Jigsaw was that while students have access to the teacher, the teacher is not online to respond to every posted discussion within the expert topic group. This places the onus on the students to cooperate with one another. One of the main roles of the teacher was to provide closure in the face-to-face sharing sessions through joint evaluation with the students on the final shared text.

Reference:

Stenning, K., Dineen, F., Mayes, T., McKendree, J., John Lee, J., & Cox, R. (1999). Vicarious Learning from Educational Dialogue. In C. Hoadley & J. Roschelle (Eds.), Proceedings of the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL) 1999 Conference, Dec. 12-15, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

TIMES THE LEARNING DESIGN HAS BEEN USED
Not provided.

MODIFICATIONS SINCE FIRST USE
Some modifications are suggested based on the findings of the evaluation conducted by the designers. See the discussion below.

DISSEMINATION
Not provided.

RESEARCH CONDUCTED ON THE DESIGN
At the end of the subject, students were asked to evaluate the Online Jigsaw in several ways:

• Firstly, within class students were asked to give written feedback on the online component. Fifty-four of the sixty-eight students handed in an evaluation.
• Secondly, students openly discussed the positives and negatives of this component as a class forum.
• Finally, a survey was designed to allow students to respond anonymously. This survey was designed to correspond to the six elements in the Activity System Model: (Engestrom & Cole 199cited in Owen 2000 further adapted by Hewitt 2001) and comprised 20 statements with a six point Lickert scale.

  References:

  Hewitt, J. (2001).Fostering a Knowledge-Building Community in a Knowledge Classroom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research association, April, Seattle.

  Owen, M. (2000).Paradigms for curriculum design: The Design of Reflective, Situated, Collaborative Professional Development Supported by Virtual Learning Environments. EURODL: http://kurs.nks.no/eurodl/eurodlen/index.html.

A summary of the findings is presented as follows:

• The responses from students to collaboration and interdependence supports the belief that at the undergraduate level there are questions concerning how well equipped students are in question formation, putting forward their own ideas and meaning making. It is clear that for some students, the acceptance of the benefits of interdependence, cooperation and independent thinking, have not occurred.
• Many students misunderstood what was required in the Online Jigsaw in that they only provided information to their groups and did not engage in an analysis of that information. Therefore, a significant number of the students only engaged in the activity at a surface level.By taking greater care with the framing of directions with a focus on analysis for future online tasks, the students’ level of engagement with the content will be addressed. This care in the framing of directions will also be necessary for clarifying the rules, the use of tools, the roles and responsibilities and the type of community desired. This will ensure the directions are more readily understood especially if presented in multiple forms: verbally in class, as a written handout and on the bulletin board instructions themselves.
• There is an ongoing tension between cooperative learning practices and the competitive nature of university environments. In future, this will be addressed through the introduction of cooperative processes earlier in the semester, as well as having a focus on what occurs through those processes. This should allow students to gain an appreciation, for not only the theory and the practice, but also what occurs through the process as a result of this practice. Placing the Online Jigsaw activity within smaller class-based groups should avoid the problem of lack of participation by students who found it difficult to communicate with students whom they did not know. In turn, this will allow peer pressure to be more effective by encouraging those who may be tardy in taking up responsibility for the roles within the Jigsaw, to do so.
• At one level students were satisfied with the role taken by the teacher though many lost motivation when the teacher was overseas. This occurred when online scaffolding was difficult to apply due to poor infrastructure in China as well as the teacher travelling within China. In future, this should not be a significant problem as the introduction to the activity will be run earlier in the semester. In addition, greater care with directions should alleviate this problem. This is not to suggest that ongoing scaffolding is not important however the retiming will make it more possible for this to occur more regularly. In addition, this retiming should address the issue of assignments being due when students are expected to engage online.
• While student motivation could be increased by allowing them to select their own topic, any method that could be employed to achieve this would be somewhat artificial, as the requirements of the unit will dictate what the range of topics could be. Furthermore, if students did choose their own topics there would be a protracted period of negotiation between students and teacher to achieve appropriate sized groups, to satisfy the needs of the students and to fulfil the requirements of the unit.

DESIGN EFFECTIVENESS VERSUS INTENDED OUTCOMES
The premise for the development of this learning design was that the application of activity-based processes that required students to participate with one another in focused discussions on a bulletin board, would result in improved outcomes for student learning.

UNEXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES
Not provided.

HOW LEARNER ENGAGEMENT IS SUPPORTED
Not provided.

Comment from the Evaluation Team...

The evaluation conducted by this project concurs with the findings from the evaluation conducted by the designers in terms of the quality and quantity of students' contributions:

"The foundation of the design is for students to engage with each other in a mutually beneficial way and the evaluation by the designers will be useful in identifying the degree of learner engagement that really occurred. The transcripts suggest an unevenness here.

The activity is enabled by an online familiarisation/socialisation phase where students comment on their teaching experience. This part draws on student experiences and appears to engage the students. The second part is the group problem-solving task (essay development). Online transcripts of this part show less evidence of engagement, interdependence and accountability with some students appearing to make limited contributions."

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF LEARNING CONTEXT
Not provided.

Comment from the Evaluation Team...

The evaluators felt that whilst the learning design does acknowledge the learning context in the first introductory task (students posting their practicum experiences) there appears to be no apparent attempt to link with students' interests and backgrounds in the Jigsaw task - the focus seems to be on learning theory.

The evaluators suggested that the designers could consider this in further implementations of this learning design.

HOW THE LEARNING DESIGN CHALLENGES LEARNERS
Not provided.

Comment from the Evaluation Team...

The evaluators stated that for students not used to working collaboratively with others or those unfamiliar with the technology, the logistical challenge of the learning design would be significant. In relation to students learning about the content, the evaluators concluded:

"Challenges are basically of a conceptual nature because student value and belief systems are not explicitly challenged by the design."

OPPORTUNITIES FOR PRACTICE
Not provided.

Comment from the Evaluation Team...

The evaluators had difficulty in determining the extent to which the learning design provides opportunities for practice:

"Students obtain practice at using online technology to work collaboratively with others to find relevant resources and to share their findings. However, it is not clear how technology is used in the drafting of the group report. How the activities were actually undertaken by students (e.g. offline or online) is unclear."