USING MICROSOFT TEAMS TO SUPPORT COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE BUILDING IN THE CONTEXT OF SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The current study investigates students’ use of Microsoft Teams as a collaborative knowledge building platform for a group sustainability assessment project. Ashby’s sustainability assessment method was used to provide scaffolding. Surveys (n=16) were administered to assess the nature of student collaboration, including students’ experiences using collaboration tools in the past, the activities students engaged in while working on the group project in MS Teams, self-assessment of collaborative abilities, comfort with giving, receiving and sharing comments and feedback, assessment of the effectiveness of Ashby’s sustainability assessment method in developing these abilities, and their overall assessment of MS Teams as a collaborative knowledge building tool. Students rated their collaborative abilities to be good to excellent and felt that the project was effective in developing those abilities. They are comfortable providing and receiving feedback and sharing their contributions openly. They found MS Teams to be extremely useful, and better than alternative platforms for key tasks including messaging, file sharing and collaborative authoring.