A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING

This study is initiated to investigate learning theories for problems based on the
workplace. Pertaining to this, a framework is proposed for collaborative problem based
learning; and a prototype called Collab2learn Discussion Board (DB) is developed as
referred on the problem that there is no online discussion board for students to give
feedback on specific comment during online discussions. This study explores learners'
performance when using Collab2learn DB in particular at different genders (female and
male), internship exposure (pre-internship and post-internship) at different learning
synchronicities (synchronous and asynchronous), and feedback formats (textual and
iconic). Research methodology has adapted prototyping methodology for the study,
whereby phpmyadmin and MySQL were used to develop the prototype. Accessible
through the network, learners' performances participated in the learning sessions were
measured in terms of quality - Solutions Quality (SQ), confidence - Solutions Confidence
(SC), quantity - Solutions Quantity (SK), and speed - Speed of Solutions Generation (SS).