International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Volume 6, Number 1, January 2012

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Research Article

Excerpt

Doing What Comes Naturally? Student Perceptions and Use of Collaborative Technologies

This study investigates how students perceive and use collaborative technologies while also examining the meanings students assign to both collaboration and technology. A qualitative inductive analysis of students’ assignments in a professional communication course demonstrates that students use technology to collaborate for its Accessibility, A/synchronicity, and Collaborativity. Students perceive and use technology within a functional literacy framework wherein technologies are tools providing pragmatic means to complete a shared-document assignment. These results are important for integrating collaborative assignments and collaborative technologies to promote social learning within the classroom.

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Bios

Jason Kalin Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media North Carolina State University Raleigh, North Carolina, USA jpkalin@ncsu.edu I am Professor and Coordinator of the Psychology Honors Program, University of Louisville. My A.B. in psychology is from Harvard and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. My earlier career was focused on the study and treatment of schizophrenia, leading to an NIMH MERIT Award and Mental Health Professional of the Year (NAMI-Georgia). My current interests also include the interface of clinical and pedagogical issues in undergraduate education. My students and I are exploring the relationship between affect and cognition ranging from critical thinking in the classroom to thought disorder in the clinic. My undergraduate teaching includes introductory psychology and personality; I also teach a graduate seminar in psychopathology. I am a licensed clinical psychologist in Kentucky.

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