Abstract

This study examined how students, working as a virtual group, experienced the online courseware system and observed interactive and recursive relationships between human agents and technology. The interview results showed that participants, situated in an academic institutional setting and working for a class assignment, soon became familiar with the structural limitation of courseware system after experiencing some technical problems during the initial period. Using the courseware system was conceived as facilitating, but sometimes constraining their virtual group work, and participants evaluated their experience positively related to the future possibility of working in a similar condition. Although it appeared that students did not actively interact with other members in their groups to share their problems in using the courseware system, they tried to compensate for the lack of informal communication within the discussion board by using other channels such as email and instant messaging. The implications of these results were discussed with regards to Orlikowski's (1992) structurational model of technology.