Supporting Collaboration in Engineering Education (SCEE)

University Of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to support collaborative learning in engineering courses by constructing, implementing, and evaluating the effectiveness of an online Engineering Education Collaboration Environment (EECE) tool. The EECE is an Internet environment in which engineering educators, with the help of a Collaborative Coach, can design effective collaborative learning activities relevant to their curriculum. The EECE automatically maps those activities onto a wiki-based collaborative environment, in which students negotiate collaborative tasks, make decisions, and build shared knowledge among team members. The project team is designing and implementing the EECE tool at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Virginia Tech. Multiple data sources in diverse class settings are being used to evaluate the effectiveness of the EECE tool. Efforts are also being made to make the EECE tool available to engineering educators for trial in their classrooms.