Collaborative Learning with Web 2.0 Technology: Synchronicity Dimension

Web 2.0 technology provides an open platform to promote active users' interaction and participation in anytime and anyplace, enabling knowledge creation, sharing, and transfer. Using grounded theory approach, this study examines how effective the online collaboration tool that employs Web 2.0 technology could enhance collaborative learning in a team-based environment in higher education. The study results discover that Web 2.0 collaboration tool lacks high synchronicity dimension. High synchronicity dimension of a communication channel is characterized by immediacy of feedback in support of attaining shared understanding, focus, and trust in team interaction. As learning is an outcome of interaction among team members who exchange ideas and share experiences to attain group solutions and bring about knowledge construction, the study suggests that Web 2.0 collaboration tool should include features supporting high synchronicity dimension.