Framing self-organized online team collaboration in a higher education course on Informatics and Society

This Full Paper in the Innovative Practice track describes a new approach towards online agile teamwork in a higher education context. The presented learning format is based on the agile epic bedtime story game and the concept of self-organized learning. It focuses on time-constrained teamwork, with the aim to achieve a shared result from the work of several loosely connected teams through iterative learning and feedback loops within and across teams. We previously successfully applied and evaluated this team collaboration format in onsite learning. In this online adaptation, the efficiency of this approach is complemented with team-building exercises, to somewhat compensate for the lack of social interaction that is inherent to online communication. This approach combines the idea of agile gamification in education with previous concepts of self-organized learning (S-O-L) and the container-differences-exchange (CDE) model to organize self-organization. The infrastructure prerequisites for this format are moderate: a tool for video conferencing, a digital whiteboard and a digital collaborative writing tool. The online learning format was implemented and evaluated in an undergraduate University course on Informatics and Society in autumn 2020 with 36 participating students. We conducted a summative qualitative content analysis of student reports to examine the effect this format has both on the learning experience as well as the social interaction between participants. Self-organized teamwork appeared viable for learning: Students rated the question how well it enabled them to learn the content of the course with a median of 8 on a scale from 1 (worst) to 10 (best) and a standard deviation of 1.5. Students considered iterative work in the same team productive, while communication across teams was perceived challenging. Teams established continuity in their communication, also between sessions, through freely available communication tools. The single most important factor to help social interaction mentioned by students was the use of breakout rooms.