Knowledge activities in distance education online group work

What kind of knowledge activities are required inorder for students to conduct online group work activitiessuccessfully in distance education? This paper reports on theknowledge activities involved within online group work indistance education. It explains the types of knowledge used inthese activities. The research is a qualitative case study setwithin an activity theory framework. Participatory observationand documentation are the data collection techniques used. Itinvestigated student knowledge activities in a postgraduatesubject called “Information Management in Organizations”. Alearning management system (LMS) called Interact (poweredby Sakai) was explored. Students were grouped together towork online with team members geographically distributedover Australia and around the world. Students progressivelydeveloped their assignment in Wiki and use other group worktools for their communication and storage of documents. Datacollected from participatory observation and documentationwere used to investigate the group work knowledge activities.The research will report the various knowledge activityimprovements explored. It proposes a model of an activitysystem that explains how knowledge activities are representedthrough activity theory notions for distance education onlinegroup assessments.