This paper discusses the effectiveness of specific project-based, collaborative activities that allow students and instructors to communicate and interact with course content in an online environment. It is imperative that course designers incorporate such collaborative activities that build relationships and a sense of community within the course. The paper provides a variety of examples of techniques which foster effective communication among students and between students and the instructor. Additionally, it addresses strategies for encouraging “quiet” participants to become more engaged in discussion of course content.

One of the greatest challenges in many forms of collaborative work is fostering ethical understandings of individual student responsibility with regard to the quality of individual and group contributions to projects. A variety of techniques may be used to encourage and to evaluate individual and group contributions. Such techniques often are most effective when generated by the group participants themselves. This paper also presents solutions to the evaluation dilemma in online, collaborative project-based courses.