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COMMUNICATION AND TOOLS

Communication and Tools



Resulting from instructional and course design, following technical infrastructure needed to fulfill the requirements:
  1. synchronous virtual environment to facilitate 2-way course delivery in which classrooms in both Sweden and Croatia are virtually joined
  2. asynchronous Web-based environment for the project coordination, collaboration and communication of distributed teams
  3. asynchronous Web environment for conducting student surveys as part of course evaluation at the end of the instructional design cycle
  4. specialized software engineering tools primarily focused on code development and maintenance, commonly known as (Software Configuration Management - SCM) tools

During the cooperation on the project development, students have both synchronous and asynchronous mechanisms of communication at their disposal. Synchronous mechanisms that are used are videoconferences, teleconferences and chat. The asynchronous mechanism are far more numerous and include e-mail, mailing lists, forum, file repositories, version management system etc. It should be noted that, due to the specifics of student time management, asynchronous communication systems were far more used than the synchronous.

Synchronous Communication

Students can use the videoconferencing system during the joint lectures, as well as NetMeeting videoconferencing at any time they set up for themselves. The teaching staff provides the required videoconferencing equipment (computers with fast Internet connection, microphones, cameras). Apart from critical situations, telephone calls and teleconferences were limited to using NetMeeting and Skype systems, due to high telephone prices.
MSN Messenger, ICQ and other chat systems were mostly used for shorter exchange of ideas.

Asynchronous Communication

Within the course, a web page was opened on the FER Content management system containing the information on the course itself (communication: teaching staff - students) as well as web pages of individual projects (communication student - student). These pages enable the publishing of news, creating discussions and saving files and links.

E-mail and mailing lists are the most common type of communication between team members, but the problem with this type of communication is that it is open and can be seen by the teaching staff.

The source code of the projects was to be maintained and coordinated by using the CVS system, however, its successful use presupposes that the students’ have foreknowledge on configuration management.