Dissemination

**Dissemination**
The evaluation of the Online learning activity was done with one of the students. The student actually attested to the relevance of the wikispaces in facilitating collaborative/group learning outside the classroom. Evaluation is a major aspect of Instructional System Design, especially for online learning activity. The evaluation process is aimed at ascertaining whether the online learning activity has been able to help the students to work together collaboratively as well as enabled them to learn and construct new knowledge. Evaluation of group activities can be a useful and valuable avenue in helping students promote personal and academic growth including developing their critical skills in the evaluation process (Lewis, 2006). In line with Willis and Wright (2000) view that emphasized summative evaluation as involving the collection of objective data on the effectiveness of the program, one of the postgraduate students involved in the online learning activity and one teaching staff were interviewed on the effectiveness of Wikispaces in promoting collaborative learning and they emphasized that wikispaces as a tool was effective in facilitating collaborative work among her group members but was emphatic on the problem of Internet connectivity and inadequate skills in the use of Internet by some students. **Analysis ** The analysis of the online learning activity was based on the contributions of two groups of students selected for online learning activity. The analysis of the contributions of the individual students revealed that the students were very active on the Wikispaces. The analysis of the contributions of the students in Group B on the wikispaces revealed that majority of the members of the group took advantage of the OLA to maximize their learning. An interview with one of the group member showed that the students rely on contributions from each other to chart the direction on how to approach the question posed and make their own contributions. In responding to the questions on the benefits derived from the OLA, she emphasized that “the online collaborative work gives me opportunity to learn from others. I look at the contribution of others to make my own comments”. This implies that the OLA has helped the student in maximizing learning. The teaching staff interviewed responded as follows “//The wikispaces OLA is effective in facilitating teaching and learning only in an environment where there are adequate infrastructure and where the teachers and students are adequately skilled in the use of Internet”//
 * Evaluation**

The Student responded as follows “//The use of wikispaces for collaborative learning has helped me to learn effectively from other colleagues, but poor Internet connection is a major challenge. Even with my Modem I find it difficult to access Internet facility//.

**Lessons learned ** The online learning activity was found to be relevant and useful in facilitating collaborative learning and group/team work among the students that are geographically dispersed. The wikispaces gave the group members opportunity to make contributions to group assignments without having to come together at the same location and also for students to learn from each other. Information gathered from the students also revealed that the use of collaborative strategy has helped them to learn as the students can access the contributions of others to get direction and insight on the group tasks or projects. The activity also revealed the enthusiasm with which the students embraced the wikispaces OLA as providing them the opportunity for flexible learning. Lewis, K.O. (2006). Evaluation of online group activities: Intra-group member peer evaluation. 22nd Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. Available at [|www.uwex.edu/disted/conference]. 
 * References **