What Is the Effect of Collaboration Tools in Education?

Collaborative Education

Education and knowledge is all about sharing and with modern technology in place, education can be made even more effective and interactive with the help of collaborative tools. The effects of collaboration tools in education is very positive because collaboration helps in bringing students of different intellects to the same level by sharing, discussing and imparting knowledge through interactive software and tools. With the rise of Internet popularity, large universities with huge numbers of students started making use of Internet based collaboration tools to pace up the academic activities and ensure every student gets due attention.

Major Effects of Collaboration Tools in Education

Collaboration tools have numerous advantages in educational activities and some major benefits are listed below:

1. Data sharing sites and software help students to share their data related to a project or assignment. For instance, in a civil engineering research group where a group of students are asked to study the soil characteristics of a large area, different groups can take readings of a defined region and then share their findings with one another, so that same activity is not repeated by all the groups. Thus, it helps in time sharing.

2. By using Google Docs, video conferencing and data sharing software like Skype or Gtalk, students can communicate to each other, irrespective of their location. For instance if two students are residing in two different hostels and are working on the same project, they can talk and share documents through collaboration tools, without having the need to meet each other personally or physically.

3. Web enabled collaboration tools are interactive, and as there is always access to Internet, one can search about any topic on the Internet to make presentations or add input to any assignment.

4. Non-regular or correspondence students always find it helpful to study through collaboration tools. They need not to visit the university personally, as everything is shared through collaboration tools. There are numerous open source collaboration tools available that are used across the globe by major universities so that a balance is maintained between the correspondent students and regular students.

Some Disadvantages

A few collaboration disadvantages also come into play when using collaborative tools in education. Yes it saves time, saves energy and reduces efforts, but in some cases, it makes students lazy. When you are getting everything on your platter and someone is always contributing, people tend to become lazy and that has emerged as the biggest drawback of using collaboration tools in education.

However, collaboration can be controlled by institutes and educational bodies. Using collaboration tools must give students more time to think and create, but not to become complacent and shirk work. A strict system should be implemented to ensure collaboration tools stay positive and constructive.

The latest collaboration tools helps to organize webinars, online document sharing, present data through video conferencing and have made it very easy to make education an interesting activity, which is how working collaboratively should be.

References:

Anadolu - https://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde32/pdf/notes_for_editor_1.pdf

Collaboration Quickly - https://collaboration.quicklyop.com/effect-of-collaboration-tools-in-education/

Images:

https://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=721

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Working_Together_Teamwork_Puzzle_Concept.jpg