Using collaborative activity as a means to explore student performance and understanding

This paper presents data from the beginning process of restructuring a usability-engineering course to incorporate aspects of collaborative-process theory with required course content. Students' collaborative processes were evaluated at the end of the semester in order to identify key areas that instructors would need to support better in future iterations of the course. Overall students were skilled communicators, but lacked ability in areas of planning, productivity and critical evaluation. A closer examination was made of difficulties that students had with critical evaluation and trade-off analysis processes since these were key aspects of the course. Findings from analyses were used to suggest ways that the course could be modified in the future to better prepare students to address these important concepts in usability engineering.