Constructing Knowledge: An Experience of Active and Collaborative Learning in ICT Classrooms

This paper reports on the impact of the implementation of active and collaborative practices in ICT (information and communication technologies) classrooms. Both of these approaches convey a lot of responsibility from the teacher to the students and the hoping, as backed up by the literature, is to promote deeper learning and reasoning skills at a higher level. The question is: how do you do all that? This research describes a specific environment that makes use of collaborative tools, like wikis and forums within an e-learning platform and of specific CRM (customer relationship management) software. In order to analyze how this learning environment gets learners actively involved in learning and working together in productive ways, students were surveyed by responding to questionnaires. Several cause-effect relations underlying the teaching-learning methodology and the students' performance are discussed. In the present study we highlight a specific environment that makes use of collaborative technological tools, like wikis and forums within an e-learning platform. Against the background of this problematic, the general goal of this paper is to contribute for the theoretical discussion on how active and collaborative experiences in ICT classrooms play a role on the construction of knowledge in higher education institutions (HEIs). We did, however, limit our field of study to the context of the curricular unit of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Systems, included in the last semester of the last year of the study plan of the first cycle of studies of the Marketing course available at the ISCA-UA (Higher Institute of Accounting and Administration of the University of Aveiro), Portugal. Based on the pointed outlines and within the curricular case presented, we intend to: (1) understand how collaborative learning environments get students actively involved in the learning process; (2) perspective the role of collaborative tools at the level of group work and (3) find out how students assess their performance within a working group. This article is organized into five key points. After the introduction we try to contextualize the use of ICT at the level of active and collaborative methodologies in the teaching and learning processes in higher education. The next section focuses on the methodological aspects of the study, including the context of the case study used in the research and techniques for collecting and processing data. The fourth section is devoted to present and discuss the results obtained. The paper ends with the main conclusions of the study. 2. CHALLENGES IN LEARNING AND TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION Trying to ensure that every student who enters the work market bears a set of personal attributions acknowledged as essential, challenges HEIs with the need to activate new ways to produce and disseminate knowledge. Bearing this context in mind, it is possible to realize a society which generates challenges over a set of not only