Using a Cloud Based Collaboration Technology in a Systems Analysis and Design Course

Abstract

In order to effectively prepare the next generation of IT professionals and systems analysts, it is important to incorporate cloud based online collaboration tools into the coursework for developing the students' cooperative skills as well as for storing and sharing content. For these pedagogical and practical reasons, Google Drive has been used at a medium-sized institution of higher education in New Zealand during the Systems Analysis and Design course. Ongoing and successful use of any learning technology requires gathering meaningful feedback from students, and acting as a mentor during their learning journey. This study has been developed and implemented to help students enjoy the collaborative technology and to help increase their satisfaction and commitment. In order to overcome the obstacles that may prevent students from using Google Drive optimally, an initial survey has been conducted to better understand the influential factors and issues. Furthermore, this study aims at promoting various types of collaboration and sharing: seeing and learning from other students' work, receiving direct suggestions from others, and allowing others to edit documents that belong to them. Following the results of the first quantitative survey, numerous teaching strategies were formulated and implemented. A final qualitative survey was done at the end of the course for students to evaluate their project work. The results of this study also provide original practical and theoretical implications that may be of interest to other researchers, course designers, and teachers.

Full text

Using a Cloud Based Collaboration Technology
in a Systems Analysis and Design Course
Emre Erturk
Eastern Institute of Technology, Napier, New Zealand
Abstract— In order to effectively prepare the next
generation of IT professionals and systems analysts, it is
important to incorporate cloud based online collaboration
tools into the coursework for developing the students'
cooperative skills as well as for storing and sharing content.
For these pedagogical and practical reasons, Google Drive
has been used at a medium-sized institution of higher
education in New Zealand during the Systems Analysis and
Design course. Ongoing and successful use of any learning
technology requires gathering meaningful feedback from
students, and acting as a mentor during their learning
journey. This study has been developed and implemented to
help students enjoy the collaborative technology and to help
increase their satisfaction and commitment. In order to
overcome the obstacles that may prevent students from
using Google Drive optimally, an initial survey has been
conducted to better understand the influential factors and
issues. Furthermore, this study aims at promoting various
types of collaboration and sharing: seeing and learning from
other students' work, receiving direct suggestions from
others, and allowing others to edit documents that belong to
them. Following the results of the first quantitative survey,
numerous teaching strategies were formulated and
implemented. A final qualitative survey was done at the end
of the course for students to evaluate their project work.
The results of this study also provide original practical and
theoretical implications that may be of interest to other
researchers, course designers, and teachers.
Index Terms— Learning technology, teamwork, open
educational resources, course development.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) course is an
important part of the information technology (IT)
curriculum for many institutions of higher education
around the world. This study was conducted at a medium-
sized institution of higher education in New Zealand,
which delivers a face-to-face Systems Analysis and
Design course to students on its main campus, including a
second section running via blended delivery for a cohort at
its remote campus. This course expects a significant
amount of self-directed hours from students for reading
and working on the assignments, in addition to lectures
and tutorials. The lectures are delivered via video
conference sessions to the remote campus. This study
encompasses the whole course since the shared online
course site and online applications play a great role for
both campuses, for providing electronic resources to all
students and facilitating additional learning activities.
SAD helps prepare students for job roles such as IT
project manager, business analyst, and systems developer.
Employment of business and systems analysts is growing.
Industry stakeholders expect to receive future graduates
who can adapt quickly to the workplace by virtue of
practical and interpersonal skills gained during their study.
Business and systems analysts work on systems and
software development projects and prepare high quality
documentation and prototypes. They collaborate and
communicate with a variety of stakeholders including
other analysts, programmers, non-technical end-users, and
executive sponsors.
In this course, there is a group assignment that provides
a valuable interpersonal learning experience and an
intensive opportunity for students to apply their newly
learnt methodology, tools, and skills, such as
communication and fact-finding. During this assignment,
students form small teams and carry out a complex project
together. The success of these teams is not a foregone
conclusion, especially in a challenging project requiring
both good social and IT skills.
Google Drive is offered by Google as part of its
ecosystem of web based services. It provides access to
data storage, a suite of office applications, synchronous
editing, permissions control, and instant communications.
Due to its popularity, Google Drive is a suitable and free
collaboration tool for students, and can serve as a good
repository for their systems development documentation.
Effective group work is an essential skill for students for
becoming work-ready. This technology assists them with
both the technical and social aspects of their learning
journey during SAD. Furthermore, in light of limited prior
research on this topic, the study of how Google Drive was
implemented, evaluated, and managed in an important
course within an IT curriculum, provides original findings
and perspectives.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
It is necessary to better understand the context of
teaching systems analysis and design, particularly in terms
of the following: facilitation of effective learning, the use
of educational technology in a blended environment, and
which approaches to take for targeting the improvement of
social skills and collaboration during typical project
activities.
Course learning activities are not only for transferring
knowledge but also for developing students’ overall
learning skills and attitudes. It is also important for
teachers to help refine and reinforce the knowledge that
the students gain from the lectures and their own reading.
In addition to the theory, the learning activities also need
to help build and activate the students' personal skills and
attitudes related to systems analysis and design. As with
any other challenging course, the learner's journey in SAD
requires active participation and self-monitoring as well as
a high degree of working in groups and building
knowledge together.

Blended learning involves a mixture of both online
(distance) delivery and traditional face-to-face classroom
instruction. SAD is a blended or sometimes a purely
online course at many universities and institutions around
the world. Interactivity between everyone is pivotal to
online delivery. E-learning provides interesting
opportunities for sharing information by the teacher as
well as between the learners themselves. This shared
information can continuously change and expand with the
contributions of both teachers and active learners.
It is also important to understand the preferences of
learners within the course’s online LMS, i.e. the learning
management system (such as Moodle, Blackboard,
Desire2Learn, etc.). One of the most important
expectations of students from an LMS’s user interface is
the ease of integration with other applications [5]. By
taking advantage of other web based and social
applications, knowledge and other artefacts can continue
to be available after the course, and can be shared with a
larger audience.
The categories of features offered by learning
management systems and how effectively or frequently
those features are used by an institution are discussed in
many papers. A convenient model with five levels (Levels
0 through 4) was proposed by Janossy [8]. A similar
model was also adapted by Abazi-Bexheti, Kadriu, and
Ahmedi [1] with some modifications, which, for the most
part, involved changing the highest level. Their highest
level looks at the extent to which students are sharing
knowledge and co-developing course resources. This can
also be accomplished with the assistance of third party
applications and learning technologies. Student
involvement in creating course content can be supported
by Google Drive. Examples and artefacts from the
previous semesters’ student projects can be shared with
new students. This way, students are not only engaging in
a peer teaching role while collaborating with their own
team members but also contributing to the learning
activities of future students.
With the increasing abundance of web and cloud based
applications and open educational resources, it is no
longer necessary for a learning management system to
provide all desired or interesting features by itself. Online
learning activities often involve collaboration and
contributing to other learners’ knowledge. In this context,
open source software provides more freedom and
flexibility to schools and users, as to ownership and
customization of content.
There are many examples of open access, open source,
or free software that can be utilized effectively within a
course’s broader e-learning environment on top of the
main platform (e.g. Moodle). For example, YouTube is a
user content driven and cloud based video repository with
an open interface for other applications. YouTube videos
are easily embedded in Moodle. Newly created
instructional videos can also be made publicly available
via YouTube. Similarly, Google Hangouts enable live
conversations at no cost between lecturers and their online
students. Mobile learning (m-learning), i.e. learning with
the assistance of mobile devices, benefits tremendously
from being able to communicate easily at no cost, and
from being able to share information anywhere by using
these open technologies.
As stated by Burns [4], among teachers of systems
analysis and design, there are many areas of difference, in
terms of learning approaches and material. However, as
Burns [4] found out, there is almost a consensus in certain
aspects. For example, most courses split their students into
groups so they can collaborate on their projects. Similarly,
‘people issues’ is one of the important concepts covered
and illustrated in the majority of SAD courses.
Easy to use and featuring a range of supporting
applications, Google Drive is one of the tools that can
facilitate this course. Furthermore, there have been
institutions that have reported positive experiences with
Google Drive (previously known as Google Docs). For
example, according to Rowe, Bozalek, and Frantz [11],
online collaboration using Google Drive enhanced the
students’ learning experience by providing a means for
interaction, and an autonomous space outside of the
classroom. Cloud based applications (e.g. Google Drive)
are also a way of deploying mobile learning. Open
educational resources have often been seen as providing
greater flexibility to the end users, i.e. educators and
students alike. Therefore, Google Drive is not only
collaboration tool for students but also a recent example of
open resources in education. The SAD course has been
designed to take advantage of the pedagogical benefits of
collaborative learning. Collaborative learning is fun for
the students and allows them to experiment; it also
simulates real world situations [10]. In the future, as
professionals working on a project, they will frequently
share and edit documents and artefacts together in a
similar way.
III. METHOD
Feedback is an important part of designing a course.
Boud and Molloy [3] suggest the improvement of
feedback in many ways, not just from the teacher to the
students. For example, more feedback from the students to
the teacher can be encouraged. Furthermore, exchanging
more feedback between students themselves would be
very beneficial.
Informal qualitative feedback on using Google Drive
was collected for the first time in 2013 from Systems
Analysis and Design students at this institution. The
mixed nature of this initial unpublished feedback
(reflecting both positive and negative experiences)
triggered a further inquiry as to the factors behind the
varying levels of satisfaction and success among students
using this tool during their Systems Analysis and Design
project. These factors include how well they understand
the tool itself, their level of commitment to the tool, and
the ways in which they choose to use Google Drive. The
last of these factors (how they use the tool) includes
strategies and choices regarding ownership, sharing, and
editing [2]. This current study has taken up a new
investigation with the aim of better understanding,
promoting, and improving the collaborative use of Google
Drive among the students.
The Systems Analysis and Design course (during
Semester 1 of 2014) included a total of 36 undergraduate
students (83% of whom were male). 92% of this group
consisted of full-time students. The same percentage also
applied to domestic New Zealand students (rather than
international students). The mean age for this group was

25. The median age was 21. The students’ ages ranged
from 18 to 45 although young learners were predominant.
Two types of new feedback, i.e. qualitative and
quantitative, have been collected from students during the
systems analysis and design group project in 2014. First, a
quantitative survey has been conducted in order to
investigate the influence of three main factors on student
satisfaction and success with Google Drive: 1) how well
they understand the technology, 2) their level of
commitment to the technology, and 3) how they choose to
use the technology. The design of the questions and the
Likert scale in the survey is partly based on Perlman’s
Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use (USE)
questionnaire [9]. This first survey was conducted early in
the course in order to diagnose the students’ initial levels
and attitudes, and to help provide appropriate instructions
and support later during the course throughout the group
project. At the end of the project, a second evaluation was
done to understand the progress made, and the students’
concluding thoughts. This qualitative student feedback
was collected through a follow-up questionnaire, which
encouraged the students to reflect on all aspects of their
teamwork (including Google Drive) during the project
assignment, which they completed.
There are two hypotheses to the initial quantitative and
exploratory part of this study. First, the more often
students use the technology and the more confident they
feel about their skills (two variables related to factor 1),
the more committed to the technology they are likely to be
– their satisfaction level, how much they enjoy it, how
effective they believe the technology is, and their
likelihood of recommending it to others (four variables
related to factor 2). The first hypothesis has been tested
through a correlation analysis between these variables, as
operationalized by the students’ survey responses.
The second hypothesis is that students are not ready to
use the technology in one or more of the following
collaborative ways: seeing and learning from other
students’ work, allowing others to see their work as well
as receiving suggestions, and allowing others to edit
documents that belong to them (three variables related to
factor 3). This hypothesis is also partly based on the
previous literature suggesting that students exercise
limited collaboration on wikis and tend to continue the
practice of individual accountability and ownership [7].
For the project, each group was responsible to complete
a list of deliverables. They were recommended to spread
the workload by allocating some of these tasks to
individuals within a group and, in turn, individual
members were encouraged to cooperate with others. The
advanced form of collaboration (i.e. the third variable) is
where students empower and help one another – by
making and allowing direct improvements, corrections,
and contributions to each other’s documents. However,
psychological ownership with controlling or protective
attitudes (on one extreme) or indifference (on the other
extreme) may inhibit students from doing these. By the
way, it might be useful to note that document editing on
Google Drive keeps track of the revision history, showing
when changes were made and by whom, and makes it
possible to undo changes and revert to an older version. In
order to explore the students’ present attitudes toward
collaboration, the second hypothesis was put forward and
tested through descriptive statistics, which were calculated
for the three variables in question, using the students’
Likert scale survey responses.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 1 summarizes the results of the correlation
analysis for the first hypothesis. Google Drive is referred
to as GD in the table. Frequency (how often the students
use Google Drive) has a positive but a small correlation
with the four variables associated with their commitment
to Google Drive. In comparison, Skill has a much higher
correlation with the same variables across the four
columns in the table below. The better a student’s skill at
using Google Drive (i.e. in terms of his/her own
perception) the greater his/her commitment and
satisfaction will be, and vice versa. Therefore the first
hypothesis has been confirmed in the case of the Skill
variable, but not in the case of the Frequency variable.
This indicated that the additional efforts to support the
learning of Google Drive needed to concentrate on filling
any existing gaps in the students’ practical skills, without
necessarily requiring additional homework requiring
repetitive or frequent practice.
TABLE I.
CORRELATIONS FOR GOOGLE DRIVE USAGE VARIABLES
Would
recommend
GD
Satisfied
with GD
Can work
effectively
with GD
Finds GD
fun to use
Frequency
of using
Google
Drive
(GD)
0.281
0.109
0.266
0.041
Skill at
using GD
0.635
0.406
0.543
0.553
Table 2 summarizes the results of the descriptive
statistics for the second hypothesis. The survey questions
could be answered according to a five-point Likert scale
as follows: strongly disagree (=1), disagree (=2), neutral
(=3), agree (=4), and strongly agree (=5). The means of
the cumulative responses to the three questions reveal that
the students found it helpful to see other group members’
work and also found it useful to receive suggestions from
other group members who could view their work. The
majority of the students answered these two questions
with strongly agree. The standard error and standard
variance for the responses to these two questions were
both small (seeing others and taking suggestions).
TABLE II.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR THE COLLABORATION VARIABLES
Seeing Others
Taking
Suggestions
Allowing Co-
editing
Mean
4.67
4.71
3.38
Median
5.00
5.00
3.00
Standard
Error
0.12
0.09
0.28
Standard
Deviation
0.56
0.46
1.38
Sample
Variance
0.32
0.22
1.90
Minimum -
Maximum
3 - 5
4 – 5
1 - 5

However, the students seemed neutral toward the idea
of allowing other group members to contribute by editing
their individual documents. Furthermore, the standard
deviation and the standard error were large, as those
student responses varied greatly, including an occurrence
of all of the five possible responses all the way from
strongly disagree to strongly agree. Therefore the second
hypothesis was not confirmed in the case of the first two
questions, as students were ready to carry out those two
collaborative approaches. However, the second hypothesis
was confirmed for the third question, the students were
not prepared to collaborate by allowing other students to
contribute to their individual documents.
This result also required the lecturer to formulate and
refine his future instructions to the students during the
course of the project, regarding group editing of certain
documents. The following approach was agreed upon: co-
editing would not be required in the first phase of the
assignment and students would be recommended to limit
the sharing to only viewing during that phase. This also
addressed any concerns about collaboration possibly
affecting individual grades for the first part of the
assignment. For the second phase of the assignment, as
part of an iterative and integrating process of analysis and
design, those project documents would be opened to
editing by others, and the assessment for those documents
would then become graded as a group in the new phase.
Furthermore, the students were recommended, if time
allowed, to bring their ideas and suggested changes to the
group meetings and discuss them prior to editing the
documents online.
The qualitative student responses by the end of
Semester 1 of 2014 show that, in comparison with 2013,
positive feedback has increased, especially in regards to
using Google Drive as a repository for group project
deliverables and artefacts. One student echoed the
opinions of many of his classmates: “I will be using
Google Drive in future assignments.” This may be partly
due to the lecturer acting upon the results of the diagnostic
survey, by promoting the tool with more commitment, and
playing a more proactive role by helping students to
improve their skills.
Many students have mentioned interpersonal issues of
arranging meetings with their team members and using
their time efficiently outside of the classroom. One of the
ways that many students used Google Drive was to
alleviate the problem of not being able to meet in person
very often. A student commented: “Google Drive is
indispensable. It greatly improved project coordination
and sharing of ideas.” Another student mentioned how
they used Google Hangouts in conjunction with Google
Drive. Furthermore, a different but common and effective
practice was “using Google Drive during the group
meeting.” In some groups, all of the students were already
Facebook friends with each other. This resulted in an
interesting combination of using Facebook in parallel with
Google Drive. For example, instant reminders could be
sent through Facebook, where they could also share links
to Google Documents.
Another outcome that permeated the students’
qualitative responses is their own appreciation for what
they have accomplished during the project assignment.
When group members had a look at and talked about each
other’s work, these discussions “reduced errors” in their
documents prior to submission for grading. Another
student commented: “a very good assignment overall feel
I learnt a lot”. One of the detailed responses described
how each member brought unique qualities and “aided in
the creation of a final finished assignment that I was proud
to be involved in.” Not all responses or experiences were
positive. Some students reported situations where an
individual member did not share certain documents with
them. Another erroneous but unusual situation was when
certain group members worked on documents offline, and
basically removed and re-uploaded those documents to the
online folder, instead of consistently maintaining those
deliverables online. Overall, the cumulative learner
response from this survey have been positive and have
provided some reassurance for using the same
collaborations tools and practices in future Systems
Analysis and Design or other similar courses.
V. CONCLUSION
Team skills and group learning skills are important in a
Systems Analysis and Design course. These attributes are
also expected by the industry and useful in the future
workplace. Therefore, the design of this particular IT
course has paid particular attention to collaboration, and a
collaborative technology has been integrated within the
delivery of this course. Small group interaction and
informal learning are both transformed and taken to a
higher level when collaboration and sharing of artefacts
takes place online [12]. Furthermore, rapid collaboration
is even more important for a systems analysis and design
project if the desired product is a mobile or web based
application with a limited scope and is expected to be
developed in a short period of time. Using online
collaboration can help students and professionals during
tasks such as prototyping, forward engineering,
programming, and testing.
During the last two years, the Systems Analysis and
Design online course web site has been updated with more
links to open education resources. The current collection
of online resources and activities forms a solid foundation;
however the SAD blended course can get even better with
further open and cloud resources in the future.
Relationships with other institutions can also be increased,
while utilizing cloud based storage and collaboration tools
next to Moodle with links to various Google Documents
(e.g. drawings, presentations, tables, and sheets).
Google Drive, as a learning tool, has been implemented
in this study with pedagogical goals in mind, and
reinforced with the help of student feedback and by
providing technical assistance and encouragement. The
results of this study are also interesting because these may
serve as insights and suggestions for best practices for
using Google Drive in the professional workplace.
Therefore, the same planning, evaluation, and learner
support strategies implemented in this study can also be
used in adult and corporate training settings.
In a broader social context, this technology also helps
students form closer connections with each other, outside
of the classroom. The connections between these
individuals will continue after the course, as a part of their
personal Google circles and online accounts. Social
bonding plays an important role on the Internet by
influencing how individuals, e.g. students, tend to behave
online [6]. During this study, it was expected that using
online collaboration in the course would give students an

additional medium for their social needs and interacting
with their classmates. However, although social factors
encourage the use of internet based technologies, they
may also impose some constraints on how an online
medium is used, namely in the form of social norms.
Individual responsibility is an influential social norm and
requires consideration in designing group assignments and
group leaning activities. Nevertheless, for the incoming
and future young learners of the so-called Generation Z
who have grown up with social media, using online
collaboration will be an essential component of active
learning and teaching strategies.
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AUTHOR
Emre Erturk is a Senior Lecturer in the School of
Computing at the Eastern Institute of Technology, New
Zealand. He earned his PhD from the University of
Oklahoma in the USA in 2007. Since then, he has also
taught face-to-face and distance education with the
University of Maryland. His research interests include
online and blended education. Email: eerturk@eit.ac.nz.