Security and Collaborative Groupware Tools in Education: A Case Study at the University of Bahrain

This paper presents an evaluation of the security, safety, and privacy of selected Online Collaborative Groupware (OCG) tools such as Skype, Facebook, Wikis and Gmail (SWFG) used to support learning activities from the perception of the students, and with a particular focus on the impact of their usage on student trust. A case study was conducted with two groups of undergraduate students at the University of Bahrain to identify and develop an efficient model for using SWFG tools securely within learning. In doing so, questionnaires were distributed post case study among two different students groups A and B. The overall finding of this study is that there are differences between two groups in their usage with respect to security, privacy, and trust for SWFG tools.