Collaborative learning: an effective and enjoyable experience! a successful computer-facilitated environment for tertiary students

We have developed a collaborative learning environment (CLE) as a student-centred approach to lecture replacement, with a special focus on assisting students' learning of difficult concepts. The majority of the program is structured around cost-efficient web-delivered tutorials incorporating re-usable interactive components. These are supported by several stand-alone computer-based learning tutorials including ones that we developed to allow students to construct their own models of physiological mechanisms, together with computer-facilitated semester-long investigative projects to enhance their communication and critical reasoning skills. Each week for two hours during two semesters, students work in groups of three with an iMac computer. The computer-facilitated tasks are designed to support and extend their three weekly lectures by encouraging peer-learning and peer-teaching. In this article, the successful attributes of this collaborative learning environment are described and evaluated. In addition, relationships between the use of CLE and the students' approaches to learning are being investigated.