Developing collaborative tools to promote communication and active learning in academia

Groupware applications such as AOL's instant messenger and Microsoft's NetMeeting have been growing in popularity in the general public for many years, starting with students on college campuses and more recently gaining acceptance in the business world as effective tools to aid in communication and productivity. Although many of these technologies were first popularized on college campuses, their use has yet to be integrated into the student/instructor teaching relationship, remaining more widely used between students for social purposes. In this paper we present the Cimel collaborative tools, a set of integrated groupware applications designed to improve communication between students and instructors and promote an active learning environment for students. In addition to the standard contact list and text messaging functionality, the Cimel collaborative tools provide a desktop sharing tool and a course-specific frequently asked questions (FAQ) database.