Students analyzing their collaboration in an international open ended group project

This paper is based on a course run in the fall semester 2008 with students from Sweden and USA where they addressed an open problem in the health sector. Part of the course for the students has been to review how the collaboration actually worked and with special attention to the collaboration platform used. The background to the course and process of choosing the collaborative platform, ClockingIT, is presented. The students' review was informed by engineering education research in order to understand the role of the technology used in their collaboration. The methods adopted by the students are outlined including their application of the Collaborative Technology Fit framework as introduced in the thesis by Clear. The role of 'ClockingIT', its effectiveness in supporting collaboration and the effectiveness of 'students as researchers' as a method for insightful reflection are presented.