An experience report on using collaboration technologies for distance and on-campus learning

This paper summarises our experiences and observations using two online collaboration technologies, Blackboard and Wimba Live Classroom, while teaching Software Engineering courses. Blackboard is used to make announcements and course materials available. The Wiki facility of Blackboard is used to update information about software tools used in the course. In addition to the text chat and record feature in Blackboard, Wimba Live Classroom is used for audio chatting with application sharing and the whiteboard facility, and also to record lectures. Blended learning, which combines traditional face-to-face teaching with online methods, can improve the quality, convenience and flexibility of communication for participants and student satisfaction. This paper reports our experiences using Blackboard and Wimba in a blended-learning environment and presents our suggestions for using collaboration technologies in teaching.