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Recent years have seen an increase in information and communication technology (ICT) for collaboration (Jones, M. (2012)). People are increasingly working together virtually in different domains. Among all these domains, pedagogy has been impacted by these tools, and this transformation is much more like a revolution that has redesigned the relationship between teachers and students and led to different and new ways of working (Hüttel, H., & Gnaur, D. (2019)). These modes require using particular collaboration tools and their inclusion in work platforms (Shamir‐Inbal, T., & Blau, I. (2021)). They are designed to accommodate several curriculum-related activities students must complete, such as courtyards (Tarazi, J., & Akre, V. L. (2013, December)) or assessments (Efu, S. I. (2019)).
Final year projects (FYPs) represent the ultimate activity in the students’ curriculum. They are designed to use, test, and enhance the knowledge students have gained over the years by confronting them with real-world projects (Beus-Dukic, L. (2011, August), Rozenes, S., & Kukliansky, I. (2013), Bringula, R. P., Balcoba, A. C., & Basa, R. S. (2016, May)). Preparing students for FYPYFP involves several tasks and actors, such as advisors and administrative staff. Projects are first reviewed and then assigned to students. A supervisor mentors a student for one semester to complete the project. At the end of the project, the student presents the study’s results to a committee for evaluation. The orchestration of all the activities mentioned above and the involvement of the actors take advantage of collaborative tools. These tools address several aspects such as communication between students (Aiken, M., Wang, J., Gu, L., & Paolillo, J. (2011)) and their advisors, outlining projects, coordinating activities between advisors and administrative staff, sharing resources, or generating reports. Several studies have shown the use of online collaboration tools (Berthoud, L., & Gliddon, J. (2018), Chu, S. K. W., & Kennedy, D. M. (2011)) or social media in FYP.
In response to the rising requirement of integrating collaboration tools in working platforms (Prinz, W., Martínez-Carreras, M. A., & Pallot, M. (2012)), several researchers endeavored to provide systems for FYP that integrate tools for several collaboration functionalities. Some of the existing systems are intended for a specific step such as project assessment (Tiwari, G., Singh, R., Chandna, V. K., Shimi, S. L., & Jain, M. (2019)) or project allocation(Jailani, N. I. S. I., Ali, A. F. M., & Ngah, S. (2022, May, whereas others are deployed for several FYP steps (Leung, C. H., Lai, C. L., Yuan, T. K., Pang, W. M., Tang, J. K., Ho, W. S., & Wong, T. L. (2015), Bakar, M. A., Jailani, N., Shukur, Z., & Yatim, N. F. M. (2011)).
Despite the plethora of existing systems, this research topic is still exciting because several issues have been raised. First, the existing platforms do not cover the entire FYP process, including the preliminary discussions between students and advisors and the processing of project proposals. In addition, some aspects of collaboration are not captured in the steps covered, such as collaborative decisions or communication. Furthermore, the need for such tools and platforms has been accentuated with the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, several studies revealed the urge to use collaboration tools in academics during this period (Byrnes, K. G., Kiely, P. A., Dunne, C. P., McDermott, K. W., & Coffey, J. C. (2021), Craig, K., Humburg, M., Danish, J. A., Szostalo, M., Hmelo-Silver, C. E., & McCranie, A. (2020)). The research in this article is designed to explore the benefits of collaboration tools during the FYP process from different actors’ points of view. The focus is given to every step of the FYP process. Questions are raised about: