Collaboration tools and their usage in group work among students at the Royal Institute of Technology

Abstract

This bachelor thesis deals with web-based collaboration tools and their application in group work within higher education. Higher education often involves some form of collaborative group work. This means that students must complete tasks by creating a project plan and having public folders to work with. The purpose of this paper is to examine if group work is performed with better results when web-based collaboration tools are utilized. We have sent out questionnaires and conducted two focus group studies with students who are currently studying at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The results show that there is a clear difference of the use of web-based tools for collaboration amongst the students from different programs, even when all of the programs are held at the same university. There are several different reasons for this, one of them being that not all students possess the same level of computer skills, and that the students studying the newer educations such as Computer Science, Media Technology and Information Technology have a better understanding of collaboration tools. Some students still find it complicated to carry out group work through the web, and the results from our survey shows that despite major disadvantages of E-mail, it’s still the tool used most within group work.