Analyzing the Effects of Computer-Supported Collabo rative Learning on Agricultural Students Knowledge regardi ng Sustainable Water Resources Management: Case Study of Iran

Abstract

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is a new trend in educational sciences. This study investigates how knowledge sha ring and transferring can be facilitated by using CSCL in a problem-solving sett ing. Intervention of research is education regarding Sustainable Water Resources Mana gement (SWRM) by Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The purpos e of this research was to determine whether change of knowledge was accomplis hed after utilization of CSCL in agricultural MSc. and PhD. students of Science and Research Branch University, Ahwaz, Iran. Education by CSCL was accomplished in a two-w eek period. As a part of the experimental design, 173 university students were r andomly assigned and divided to four groups. The first group with 43 students was labele d pretest-posttest treatment group (E). The second group, with 44 students, labeled pretest -posttest control group (C 1 ), only received face to face education, which was known as the control group. Thus, we compared the effect of the treatment between the fi rst and second group. The third group as the posttest-only treatment group (C 2 ) received the CSCL, with 44 students, and the fourth group as posttest-only control group (C 3 ) with 42 students did not receive the treatment. The results showed that there was signif icant difference between posttests knowledge score of C 2 and C 3 , and E and C 1 . Also, there was a significant difference between pretest and posttest in the experimental gr oup. This result indicated the impact of treatment (CSCL) on the knowledge level of stude nts. In addition, F-test analysis showed there were significant differences among pos ttests in all groups. Keywords : Collaborative learning, Computer-supported collab orative learning, Solomon four group designs