Activity Theory to Guide Online Collaborative Learning Instructional Design

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are facing challenges to improve its traditional focus on individual learning towards social learning. Despite the great success in distributing learning materials and managing students, the availability of the read and write features of social networking applications had encouraged educators to move their learning spaces toward a more interactive applications. Collaborative learning builds its character from social learning, had been established as an activity that enhances students’ knowledge building, team learning and sharing of knowledge among peers. Developing online collaborative learning activity poses many challenges as this involves developing many components to support the learning environment. Therefore it is important to understand each component’s contribution to help guide students learning by themselves socially. Activity theory provides a descriptive framework to elaborate the process of the six components involved in an online collaborative knowledge building activity. This study combines quantitative and qualitative method to collect data from survey, system log and collaborative messages posted in the customised Learning Management System (LMS) called e-Kolaborasi System. Findings suggest that online collaborative learning instructions based on the LMS system were able to assist students in their online collaborative learning activities. Nevertheless the students could only abide the rules to conduct collaborative activities during two periods of time which are during their free time and after practical sessions. This response indicates the reasons as to why the students were not able to give quick feedbacks to their community members.