The session is aimed to be an interactive session, inviting lecturers, students and higher education professionals who have an experience and interest on online collaborative learning environments (e.g.Padlet, Wikis). Particular emphasis is on environments that support online interactions between participants for co-learning and co-producing materials on topics of interest. The adoption of such tools has enabled teachers and students to explore learning via a new medium beyond face-to-face interaction and discussions during live sessions (Ellis, 2015).

This is being increasingly adopted as means to facilitate the delivery of remote lectures and MOOCs (Dewitt, 2015) as well. While there are a variety of applications of such tools for producing coursework, discussion groups, real-time support etc., the foundation for such mechanisms is reliant on students working together as groups of learners, collaborators and co-developers (Andersen, 2007). The final aim of this process is a variety of outcomes such as a body of work(assessments) or a shared understanding of a topic of interest (co-learning). While the rapid adoption of such tools is encouraging and much welcomed within the higher education context, there is a need to study student participation in more depth. 

This session aims to explore this gap and showcase initial insights gained by qualitative analysis of open data available regarding such online co-learning spaces.