Working collaboratively on the digital global frontier

Abstract

An international online collaborative learning experience was designed and implemented in preservice teacher education classes at the University of Calgary, Canada and the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. The project was designed to give preservice teachers an opportunity to live the experience of being online collaborators investigating real world teaching issues of diversity and inclusivity. Qualitative research was conducted to examine the complexity of the online collaborative experiences of participants. Redmond and Lock’s (2006) flexible online collaborative learning framework was used to explain the design and the implementation of the project. Henri’s (1992) content analysis model for computer-mediated communication was used for the online asynchronous postings and a constant comparative method of data analysis was used in the construction of themes. From the findings, the authors propose recommendations for designing and facilitating collaborative learning on the digital global frontier.