Using learning management systems to support students' collaborative learning in higher education

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are web-based systems for the distribution, management and retrieval of course materials, and to support communication between students and instructors. A LMS can also support peer collaboration by providing students with the capacity to create their own project sites. In this paper we present data from system logs, surveys, and interviews to investigate how one such system, CTools, is used by students at a large public university to facilitate peer learning.