Abstract
This study compared the effects of two different computer-supported collabora-tive learning environments on teacher-education students' conceptual understanding of theories and expertise in teaching. Participants were 49 students who took a course titled ＂Integrating Instructional Theory and Practice＂ offered by a teacher education program in a national university in Taiwan. The participants assigned to the experimental group used Blackboard (N=25) and those in the control group used Knowledge Forum (N=24). The study employed a mixed-method design. Data sources include students' posts and activities recorded in the databases of BB and KF. One-way ANOVA was employed to compare the differences between students' online activities (e.g., number of notes posted). An open-coding procedure were adopted to analyze the content of student notes. The results show that: (1) more built-on actives were observed in the BB group than in the KF group; (2) students in the KF group demonstrated higher levels of understanding of the relationship between creative teaching theory and practice than those in the BB group did. Strategies for facilitating teacher-education students' teaching ability by means of the instructional technologies in the information age are provided.