Abstract: We analyze classroom orchestration as a question of usability in which the classroom is the user. Our experiments revealed design features that reduce the global orchestration load. According to our studies in vocational schools, paper-based interfaces have the potential of making educational workflows tangible, i.e. both visible and manipulable. Our studies in university classes converge on minimalism: they reveal the effectiveness o tools that make visible what is invisible but do not analyze, predict or decide for teachers. These studies revealed a third circle of usability. The first circle concerns individual usability (HCI). The second circle is about design for teams (CSCL/CSCW). The third circle raises design choices that impart visibility, reification and minimalism on classroom orchestration. The fact that a CSCL environment allows or not students to look at what the next team is doing (e.g. tabletops versus desktops) illustrates the third circle issues that are important for orchestration.

Abstract: This paper introduces an approach to analyzing temporal patterns of knowledge construction (KC) in online discussions, including consequences of role assignments. The paper illustrates the power of this approach for illuminating collaborative processes using data from a semester-long series of discussions in which 21 university students were assigned weekly roles. The KC contributions of all 252 posts in the discussion were coded using a five phase scheme (Gunawardena et al. 1997). Then, statistical discourse analysis was applied to identify segments of discussion characterized by particular aspects of KC, and “pivotal posts”—those posts which initiated new segments of discussion. Finally, the influences of assigned student roles on pivotal posts and KC were modeled. The results indicate that most online discussions had a single pivotal post separating the discussion into two distinct segments: the first dominated by a lower KC phase; the second dominated by a higher KC phase. This provides empirical evidence supporting the progressive nature of the KC process, but not the necessity of the full five-phase sequence. The pivotal posts that initiated later segments were often contributed mid-discussion by students playing one of two summarizing roles (Synthesizer and Wrapper). This suggests that assigning a summarizing role mid-discussion can aid group progress to more advanced phases of KC. Finally, in some discussion segments, the KC phase of a post was related to characteristics of the two preceding posts. Collectively, the results demonstrate the power of this temporal approach for investigating interdependencies in collaborative KC in online discussions.

Abstract: While some studies found positive effects of collaboration on student learning in mathematics, others found none or even negative effects. This study evaluates whether the varying impact of collaboration can be explained by differences in the type of knowledge that is promoted by the instruction. If the instructional material requires students to reason with mathematical concepts, collaboration may increase students’ learning outcome as it promotes mutual elaboration. If, however, the instructional material is focused on practicing procedures, collaboration may result in task distribution and thus reduce practice opportunities necessary for procedural skill fluency. To evaluate differential influences of collaboration, we compared four conditions: individual vs. collaborative learning with conceptual instructional material, and individual vs. collaborative learning with procedural instructional material. The instruction was computer-supported and provided adaptive feedback. We analyzed the effect of the conditions on several levels: Logfiles of students’ problem-solving actions and video-recordings enabled a detailed analysis of performance and learning processes during instruction. In addition, a post-test assessed individual knowledge acquisition. We found that collaboration improved performance during the learning phase in both the conceptual and the procedural condition; however, conceptual and procedural material had a differential effect on the quality of student collaboration: Conceptual material promoted mutual elaboration; procedural material promoted task distribution and ineffective learning behaviors. Consequently, collaboration positively influenced conceptual knowledge acquisition, while no positive effect on procedural knowledge acquisition was found. We discuss limitations of our study, address methodological implications, and suggest practical implications for the school context.

Abstract: Adaptive collaborative learning support systems analyze student collaboration as it occurs and provide targeted assistance to the collaborators. Too little is known about how to design adaptive support to have a positive effect on interaction and learning. We investigated this problem in a reciprocal peer tutoring scenario, where two students take turns tutoring each other, so that both may benefit from giving help. We used a social design process to generate three principles for adaptive collaboration assistance. Following these principles, we designed adaptive assistance for improving peer tutor help-giving, and deployed it in a classroom, comparing it to traditional fixed support. We found that the assistance improved the conceptual content of help and the use of interface features. We qualitatively examined how each design principle contributed to the effect, finding that peer tutors responded best to assistance that made them feel accountable for help they gave.

Abstract: This paper explores how wikis may be used to support primary education students’ collaborative interaction and how such an interaction process can be characterised. The overall aim of this study is to analyse the collaborative processes of students working together in a wiki environment, in order to see how primary students can actively create a shared context for learning in the wiki. Educational literature has already reported that wikis may support collaborative knowledge-construction processes, but in our study we claim that a dialogic perspective is needed to accomplish this. Students must develop an intersubjective orientation towards each others’ perspectives, to co-construct knowledge about a topic. For this purpose, our project utilised a ‘Thinking Together’ approach to help students develop an intersubjective orientation towards one another and to support the creation of a ‘dialogic space’ to co-construct new understanding in a wiki science project. The students’ asynchronous interaction process in a primary classroom—which led to the creation of a science text in the wiki—was analysed and characterised, using a dialogic approach to the study of CSCL practices. Our results illustrate how the Thinking Together approach became embedded within the wiki environment and in the students’ collaborative processes. We argue that a dialogic approach for examining interaction can be used to help design more effective pedagogic approaches related to the use of wikis in education and to equip learners with the competences they need to participate in the global knowledge-construction era.

Abstract: In recent years there has been a proliferation of research findings on CSCL at the micro and macro levels, but few compelling examples of how CSCL research has impacted actual classroom practices at the meso-level have emerged. This paper critically examines the impact of adopting a systemic approach to innovative education reforms at the macro, meso, and micro levels in Singapore. It presents the case for adopting design research as a methodology for CSCL integration that meets the needs of schools, and discusses a specific CSCL innovation that holds the potential for sustaining transformation in classroom practices. Our driving question is: In what ways can the routine use of CSCL practices in the classroom be supported by exploring systemic factors in the school setting through design research? We will explore the synergistic conditions that led to meaningful impact (at the micro level), mediated by systemic approaches to working with teachers in the schools (at the meso level), guided by Singapore’s strategic planning for scalability (at the macro level).

Abstract: Our research aims to identify children’s communicative strategies when faced with the task of solving a geometric puzzle in CSCL contexts. We investigated how to identify and trace distributed cognition in problem-solving interactions based on discursive cohesion to objects, participants, and prior discursive content, and geometric and cooperative concepts. We report on the development of a method of coding and representation of verbal and gestural content for multimodal interactional data and initial application of this framework to a microethnographic case study of two small groups of 7 and 8-year-old learners solving tangram manipulatives in physical and virtual desktop settings. We characterize the establishment of shared reference points as “coreferences” which cohere on object, para, and meta-levels through both gesture and speech. Our analysis foregrounds how participants establish common referential ground to facilitate collaborative problem solving with either computer-supported or physical puzzles. Using multimodal analysis and a theoretical framework we developed to study interactional dynamics, we identified patterns of focus, dominance, and coalition formation as they relate to coreferentiality on multiple levels. Initial findings indicate increased communication and cohesion to higher-level principles in the virtual tangram puzzle-solving setting. This work contributes to available models of multimodal analysis of distributed cognition using current manipulative technologies for early childhood mathematics education.

Abstract: Metacognitive scaffolding in a computer-supported learning environment can influence students’ metacognitive activities, metacognitive knowledge and domain knowledge. In this study we analyze how metacognitive activities mediate the relationships between different avatar scaffolds on students’ learning. Multivariate, multilevel analysis of the 51,339 conversation turns by 54 elementary school students working in triads showed that scaffolding has an effect on students’ learning. Students receiving structuring or problematizing metacognitive scaffolds displayed more metacognitive knowledge than students in the control group. Metacognitive activities mediated the effects of scaffolding, and increased metacognitive activities supported students’ metacognitive knowledge. Moreover, students who were engaged in proportionately more cognitive activities or fewer off-task activities also outperformed other students on the metacognitive knowledge test. Only problematizing scaffolds led to more domain knowledge and metacognitive activities mediated the effects of the problematizing scaffolds. Moreover, students in the problematizing condition who engaged in more cognitive activities or whose group mates used more relational activities had greater domain knowledge acquisition than other students.

Abstract: Dual eye tracking offers new possibilities for the analysis and diagnosis of collaborative interaction. Cross-recurrence analyses and visualizations offer insight into how closely two collaborators’ gaze follow each other. We contrast two cases to illustrate how gaze cross-recurrence can be used as a correlate of high and low quality interaction. The intriguing graphical patterns that result from the time coupled traces of the collaborators’ fixations are footprints of the quality of the interaction. Good quality interaction features a higher recurrence rate than low quality interaction. The graphical structure of the recurrence plots indicates whether collaborators divide labor and whether they are sharing visual attention.

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a net-based peer review process for improving Chinese adult e-learners’ English writing ability. A class of 36 students participated in this study, which lasted one school year of two semesters. Participants were divided into three groups according to their English writing abilities at the beginning of the study. They attended regular synchronous classes and took writing assignments home. The feature of this experiment is that their writings were submitted for peers’ reviews from another group. At the end of each semester, an online writing contest was organized and all the participants took part in order to examine learning outcomes. A survey at the end of the study was also conducted to obtain students’ perceptions of the process. The result of the study shows that all the participants obtained satisfactory results, but the students with lower writing ability made more progress than those with higher ability. The finding also indicates that students with higher writing ability tend to become discouraged if they are grouped with lower-ability students for too long.

Abstract: This paper seeks to contribute new insight to the process of learning during idea generation (i.e., brainstorming) by proposing and evaluating two alternative operationalizations for learning, which we refer to as connection-based learning and multi-perspective learning, during a carefully designed idea-generation task in the earth-sciences domain. Specifically, this paper presents two controlled experiments. In the first study we manipulate two independent factors, first whether students work individually or in pairs, and second whether students work with the VIBRANT agent or not. The second study includes one additional hybrid agent condition motivated by results from the first study as well as other enhancements to the VIBRANT agent’s discussion-analysis technology. Our finding is that while brainstorming in pairs leads to short-term process losses in terms of idea-generation productivity, with a corresponding reduction in connection-based learning, it produces a gain in multi-perspective learning. Furthermore, automatically generated feedback from VIBRANT improves connection-based learning. In the second study, support from an enhanced version of VIBRANT showed evidence of mitigating the process losses that were associated with reduced learning in the pairs condition of the first study.

Abstract: With the advent of computer technology, researchers and instructors are attempting to devise computer support for effective collaborative technical writing. In this study, a computer-supported environment for collaborative technical writing was developed. This system (Process-Writing Wizard) provides process-oriented scaffolds and a synchronous online chat room to facilitate real-time collaborative writing practice. It allows multiple students to work synchronously on collaborative writing tasks via the Internet. It also helps develop collaborative writing strategies, such as creating team agendas, brainstorming, creating team outlines, and generating team articles. An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of the system on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students’ collaborative writing experiences. First, an attitude questionnaire was used to evaluate learners’ perceptions, acceptance, attitudes, and continuing motivation toward the functionalities and guidance provided by the system. Second, students’ writing products were examined to evaluate the effect of the system on EFL students’ collaborative writing quality, especially on content and organization. Finally, this study analyzed and coded students’ synchronous chats with three categories (article-related interactions, social interactions, and system operation-related interactions) to evaluate the effect of the system on students’ interactions. The results of the experiment showed: (1) the students had positive attitudes toward the system and continuing motivation to use the system in future writing tasks; (2) analysis of writing products suggested that students produced better content and organization with the support of the system; (3) the procedural facilitation provided by the system successfully scaffolded students to converse more in the category of article-related interactions. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

Abstract: One of the challenges for facilitators in collaborative work is that they typically see only the final product of a groups’ interactive work. This is a problem as it means that the role of each individual may be hard to determine. This paper proposes a set of visualisations which aim to give teachers insights into longitudinal participation of each group member, an indication of the extent of each learner's contribution and the building process of the group product in terms of overall activity towards a good solution. We exploit the affordances of tabletops to capture the data in order to infer these visualisations. We evaluate these by assessing whether facilitators could answer key questions about aspects of groups. Key contributions of the paper are the design of new visualisations, results of their evaluation and the implementation of a tabletop concept mapping application which was carefully designed to both support collaboration and capture of the history of the collaborative process.

Abstract: Changing practices in schools is a very complex endeavor. This paper is about new practices we prompted to foster collaboration and critical reasoning in science classrooms: the presentation of pictures representing different perspectives, small group synchronous argumentation, and moderation of synchronous argumentation. A CSCL tool helped in supporting synchronous argumentation through graphical representations of argumentative moves. We checked the viability of these practices in science classrooms. To do so, we investigated whether these practices led to conceptual learning, and undertook interactional analyses to study the behaviors of students and teachers. Thirty-two Grade 8 students participated in a series of activities on the day/night cycle. Learning was measured by the correctness of knowledge, the extent to which it was elaborated, the mental models that emerged from the explanations, the knowledge integration in explanations, and their simplicity. We showed that participants could learn the day/night cycle concept, as all measures of learning improved. For some students, it even led to conceptual change. However, the specific help provided by teachers during collective argumentation did not yield additional learning. The analysis of protocols of teacher-led collective argumentation indicated that although the teachers’ help was needed, some teachers had difficulties monitoring these synchronous discussions. We conclude that the next step of the design-research cycle should be devoted to (a) the development of new tools directed at helping teachers facilitate synchronous collective argumentation, and to (b) activities including teachers, designers, and researchers for elaborating new strategies to use these tools to improve the already positive learning outcomes from synchronous argumentation.

Abstract: This article presents a pilot study carried out to investigate the potential of a functionality marker setting, included in a synchronous collaborative videoconferencing platform (VISU). Markers, supported by a trace-based system, are designed to facilitate tutors' activity. They provide tutors with (1) the possibility of annotating their distant learners' learning activity, and (2) information pertaining to their own behavior during pedagogical interaction, which can potentially enhance their professional performance as online language tutors. This study concentrates on the marker-based traces of eight language tutors collected in the course of pedagogical interactions with their distant learners during a seven-week transnational collaborative project. It presents both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the use of markers during synchronous language teaching sessions and assesses the utility and usability of such a functionality for language tutoring in order to inform future design and training.

Abstract: This paper illustrates the experience gained within an online course, where a collaborative technique, namely Role Play, was used within an asynchronous text-based environment to trigger collaboration and interactions among students. In a pilot study, the technique was analyzed using an evaluation model and two different means: on the one hand, the content analysis carried out by the researchers of the messages exchanged by the students during the Role Play; on the other, a questionnaire aimed at investigating students’ impressions concerning the technique itself. The aim of the study is twofold: to understand the impact of the proposed roles on the online learning process, and to investigate whether roles facilitated members’ awareness of the overall process itself.

Abstract: Research in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is diverse and multi-vocal, in that multiple theoretical and methodological traditions speak to questions concerning how learning takes place in social settings. Whether this multivocality leads to balkanization or is a source of strength may require deliberate efforts at identifying strategies and finding boundary objects for productive discourse across this diversity. This paper and associated symposium reports on the results of such an effort—a four-year series of five workshops exploring the basis for productive dialogue between multiple analytic traditions in CSCL. After a brief introduction to our objectives and the series of workshops, we illustrate lessons learned with three examples in which a group of analysts deliberately chosen for their diversity analyzed three small corpora with respect to identifying "pivotal moments" in collaborative learning and compared their results. The project also illustrates more generally the potential value of collaborative learning among researchers.

Abstract: In this paper we present a new tool, NumberNet, designed to promote within and between group collaboration in a mathematics classroom. The activity builds on a standard individual mathematics activity (Explode-A-Number; Atkinson, 1992), to create a three-stage collaborative activity that promotes flexibility with numbers, operators and calculations. This tool uses a network of multi-touch tabletop computers in a classroom environment, taking students through a small group production activity, rotation of the activity between groups, and finally a sorting and structuring activity. Pilot results from 32 students indicate significant gains in the number of calculations that students produce from pre to post test. Further work and implications are described.

Abstract: In this paper we present a case study about a community of practice’s foundation and development among Italian teachers, researchers and university students who participated in a European project aimed at developing and testing innovative pedagogical models and technologies for collaborative knowledge building. Forty-five people (34 teachers, five researchers and six university students) participated in the community of adults that interacted for a school year both face to face and online. We analyzed interactions in order to study the roles, forms and distribution of participation in that community, and the content of teachers’ reflections about the activity. The analysis focuses particularly on different modalities of participation between expert teachers (involved in the project from the beginning) and novices, novice and expert being treated as relevant dimensions according to Wenger’s model. Conversations were transcribed and a qualitative analysis of face-to-face and online discussion performed. The diversity of roles and different modalities of participation between social factors involved in the community, in particular between novice and expert teachers, emerged from the analysis. In final focus groups, teachers underlined innovative potentialities as well as difficulties related to computer-supported collaborative learning, both in classroom activities and in teacher training. In these final focus groups, novice teachers participated in the community, becoming more competent and conscious partners in shared planning with the expert teachers.

Abstract: This paper shares preliminary findings on a new program of research on collaborative learning in smart classrooms. Using a co-design method, researchers worked with high school teachers to create engaging curriculum activities that provided the context for two studies in math and physics. The activity designs aim to increase the depth of students' conceptual understanding by breaking down learning goals into manageable sections. Students "tagged" questions in terms of relevant concepts, analyzed visualizations that captured the collective wisdom of the classroom community, critiqued results, and negotiated a shared understanding of domain-specific principles. Twenty-one mathematics students from grades ten and eleven participated in the first study; thirty-two grade twelve physics students participated in the second. Results showed improvements in problem-solving (in the second study), as well as improved tagging proximity to an expert model (in both studies). Issues with collaboration scripts used in the smart classroom are also discussed.

Abstract: Conducting learning conversations through online discussion forums differs from face-to-face conversations as learners can be selective in what comments they choose to “listen” to, when they chose to do so, and how long they spend attending to them. Using cluster analysis of learners’ click-stream data from an online discussion forum, this study identified three patterns of behaviors that differentiate between learners: Superficial Listeners, Intermittent Talkers; Concentrated Listeners, Integrated Talkers; and Broad Listeners, Reflective Talkers. Clusters differed in the amount of time spent listening, number of posts attended to, number and length of their sessions, and number of own posts contributed and reviewed. Clusters did not differ in percentage of posts scanned (vs. read), time to compose posts, length of posts made, or final course grades. Results are compared to interaction styles found for other online tools and implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Abstract: This paper was presented at the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), held in Hong Kong from 4 - 8 Jul 2011

Abstract: The goals of this paper are twofold: (1) to demonstrate how previously published data can be re-analyzed to gain a new perspective on CSCL dynamics and (2) to propose a new measure of social cohesion that was developed through improvements to existing analytic tools. In this study, we downloaded the Simuligne corpus from the publicly available Mulce repository. We improved the Knowledge Space Visualizer (KSV) to deepen the notion of cohesion by using a dynamic representation of sociograms. The Calico tools have been used and extended to complete this cohesion measure by analyzing lexical markers. These complementary analyses of cohesion, based on clique sizes and communication intensity on the one hand, and lexical markers on the other hand, offer more detailed information on (a) the relationships between participants and (b) the structure and intensity of communication. In particular, the analyses highlight strong convergences that were not visible in the previous analysis.

Abstract: Designing technology-enhanced learning requires merging technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge domains, and thus often carried out by multi-professional expert teams. However, working in such teams may involve challenges resulting from participants’ different knowledge bases and ways of thinking. This research examined the collaborative design process of three teams who were part of a university initiative to develop technology-enhanced learning. We found that each of the teams: (1)suggested design solutions only after extensive group exploration of the various aspects of the problem, (2)made design decisions in a balanced process in which all domain experts were equally involved, (3)appreciated each other’s expertise and used team meetings to learn from each other, and (4)carefully provided ideas that were not in their own domain of expertise. The success of the three teams in designing solutions that were based on their shared knowledge is explained in light of the management process of the university initiative.

Abstract: In this paper we explore possibilities for open learner models to facilitate collaborative interaction and learning. We provide examples of the main approaches that use open learner models to support collaboration, and discuss some of the key issues that need to be considered for future work uniting research in the fields of computer-supported collaborative learning and open learner modelling.

Abstract: Computer-supported collaborative learning has an unexploited potential of becoming an effective learning method for pupils with intellectual disabilities. This paper aims at showing how some specific requirements of this target group may be met by structuring a learning situation with the help of floor control, which restricts the opportunities of a learning dyad to act simultaneously within the learning environment. It was expected that floor control could improve communication between pupils with intellectual disabilities by explicitly structuring and restricting activities in the learning environment and making it necessary for the pupils to communicate. To examine if floor control really supports the collaboration process in the hypothesized way, two different versions of a CSCL environment were implemented and compared. The results revealed improved task-related communication and a higher quality of interaction outcomes.