Selection and use of a web based collaborative learning management tool to teach professional issues

Professional Issues in Software Engineering (PISE) is a final year undergraduate module for computer science students that focuses on the legal, ethical and social aspects of computing. The ethical strand of this module, which aims to develop moral reasoning in the learners, has in the past proved to be the most difficult for students to grasp. Recent research indicates that working in groups can contribute to the development of moral reasoning[1]. However, group work also brings with it problems of identifying and assessing individual contributions [2]. During the current academic year a commercially available collaborative learning management tool (CLMT), Blackboard, has been used to enable a large cohort (130 students) to be taught and assessed using a group based approach. This paper applies a framework [3] to identify suitable tools and examines the use of this CLMT in teaching PISE. It gives details of the different facilities offered by the system, an analysis of how these were used and some reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of Blackboard.