aw1l 2.1 Introduction

Introduction

This experience is framed within the two projects (totally within the first, already finished, and partly with the second, still in active development) entitled:

1. "Design, implementation and evaluation of experiences of collaborative work in teaching experimental sciences"
   ("Disseny, implementació i avaluació d'experiències de treball col·laboratiu en la docència d'assignatures de ciències experimentals", AGAUR, Ref.: 2003 MQD 00167, also known as "UniWiki Project" - http://uniwiki.ourproject.org ; already finished).
   .
2. "Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the use of Wikis to improve the quality of the evaluation and tutorship of the blended learning and teaching"
   ("Anàlisi dels avantatges i inconvenients de l'ús de Wikis per millorar la qualitat de l'avaluació i tutoria de l'ensenyament i aprenentatge semipresencial"; ICE-UB, Ref.: REDICE04, also known as "UniWiki-Redice Project" - http://uniwiki.ourproject.org/REDICE0406 ; still under development)

New tools of collaborative work have been experimented in these projects (De Pedro 2004), with several subjects and degrees, mainly from experimental sciences (Table 1). The degree of adequacy of the new tools and methodologies employed to writing up documents in group has been evaluated later on (De Pedro et al., 2005a), in order to improve the performance and yield of the students that they have used them, with respect to those that have used traditional methodology, considering many factors that may affect them while learning at university (Figure 1).



After a pilot experience, TikiWiki CMS/Groupware collaborative portal web site (http://tikiwiki.org) was chosen as the main environment to enhance asynchronous communication and cooperative learning among students, as well as the basic environment of work for lecturers (Figure 2). Some courses were offered for training students on the tools and methodologies used, but unluckily only a few students joined them from the ones that would participate in the subjects later on. On the other hand, other students joined also the courses, and they were highly satisfied with them, according to the Students' Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ) survey they had to fill at the end of each one of them.



In this communication, qualitative results from the cited projects are shown, whereas most of the quantitative results are shown in another communication (De Pedro et al. 2006).