Effects of a context awareness tool in the evolution of group awareness during a long-term project activity in a virtual campus

In distance learning, almost all contextual information is lost, causing difficulties in communication (Rosenberg and Sillince, 2000), participation (Guzdial, 1997), time coordination (Lakkala et al, 2001) and time tracking (Dillenbourg, 2002), among other difficulties. Within this context, the perception, understanding and anticipation of other members'actions and resources (group awareness) become more difficult to develop. In this study, our first hypothesis relates to the development of group awareness during the collaborative activity. We suppose that interpersonal perception, or group awareness, will grow as the consequence of collaboration time spent working in the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) activity. The second hypothesis suggests an increase of group awareness due to the introduction of a context awareness tool in the Computer Learning Environment (CLE); based on the assumption that group awareness could be improved by enhancing the reflexive properties of the CLE. In order to test these hypotheses, we conducted an experimental study introducing a context-awareness tool (Time Awareness Tool) in order to evaluate its impact on group time awareness scores. The students were enrolled in the introductory course for the incoming learners of the Limoges University Virtual Campus. During this course the students worked in separate groups on a project activity. Half of the groups used the context-awareness tool to visualize their team-mates learning times. This tool, named Time Awareness Tool, has been designed to enhance the perception of interpersonal learning times (group time awareness), which measures the accuracy of students' perception of their team-mates' learning times. The results obtained allow us to retain our first hypothesis on group awareness improvement due to the time the students spent together from the start of the collaborative activity (F(1, 70) = 6,243, MSE = .009, p = .015, a =. 05). The results also allow us to consider a slight positive effect of the contextual-awareness tool on the group awareness score (F(1, 70) = 3,512, p = .065).