Online Collaborative Learning in Pre-Service Teacher Education

Abstract

Technology-enhanced collaborative learning has become attractive in higher education. Teacher education programs have made extensive efforts for meaningful use of online technologies for collaboration and communication. This review aims to synthesize a comprehensive literature review on PSTs' collaborative learning with online tools. First, the review revealed that the number of articles published has increased especially in the last five years with contributions from researchers around the world. Second, there were three types of online technologies used mainly for collaboration in PST education: Asynchronous, synchronous, and social media tools. Third, online tools for collaboration were reported as mainly beneficial in PSTs' education contexts. Forth, while there are notable exceptions, challenges to integrate online collaboration tools in PSTs' education programs were scant. Finally, there were various instructional practices where educators integrated online collaborative tools for learning. Future research directions are elaborated.