Designing Tangible as an Orchestration Tool for Collaborative Activities

Currently more and more higher education institutes implement CSCL (computer supported collaborative learning) environments to facilitate collaboration among their students. However in order to support effective and reusable collaborative learning design we need represent collaborative learning activities in a formal way so that they can be recognized and processed automatically by the computer. In this paper we present IMS LD, a process modelling language to formalize collaborative learning activities, and then discuss the limitations and extensions of the language in modelling collaborative learning activities.

An Electronic Learning System is an educational platform that takes place over the Internet. Due to its convenience and flexibility, learning through an Electronic Learning Management System (LMS) results in effective learning experiences. The purpose of this research is to design and develop a LMS for programming education. Collaborative, microlearning and scaffolding programming learning approach were incorporated into the design and development of the learning management system for programming language. The software was developed using waterfall model, and evaluated by analyzing user’s feedback. The tools used in building the learning management system are visual studio code, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), cascading style sheet, javascript, python, django, Django rest framework, Jason, ajax, git, tinyMCE. The evaluation of the newly implemented online learning platform based on user feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Users appreciated the platform's intuitive interface, which allowed for easy navigation and quick access to resources. The clear and concise instructions provided were also highly commended, as they helped to ensure that users understood the system's various features and capabilities. Users also noted the platform's support for various types of learning content, including text, audio, video, and interactive materials, which helped to create a more engaging and dynamic learning experience. Furthermore, the platform's effective tools for monitoring student progress and managing course completion were praised for their efficiency and ease of use. The platform's support for collaborative learning was also highly valued, with users citing the ability to work together and exchange ideas as a valuable aspect of the platform. In conclusion, the newly implemented online learning platform is a valuable tool that can significantly enhance the learning experience of students. The positive feedback from users suggests that the platform's support for micro-learning and collaborative learning can effectively promote engagement, collaboration, and successful learning outcomes. These findings underscore the importance of designing and implementing effective online learning platforms that support the needs of both students and instructors.

Mobile collaborative learning is considered the next step of on-line collaborative learning by incorporating mobility as a key and breakthrough requirement. Indeed, the current wide spread of mobile devices and wireless technologies brings an enormous potential to e-learning, in terms of ubiquity, pervasiveness, personalization, flexibility, and so on. For this reason, Mobile Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning has recently grown from a minor research field to significant research projects covering a fairly variety of formal and specially informal learning settings, from schools and universities to workplaces, museums, cities and rural areas. Much of this research has shown how mobile technology can offer new opportunities for groups of learners to collaborate inside and beyond the traditional instructor-oriented educational paradigm. However, mobile technologies, when specifically applied to collaborative learning activities, are still in its infancy and many challenges arise. In addition, current research in this domain points to highly specialized study cases, uses, and experiences in specific educational settings and thus the issues addressed in the literature are found dispersed and disconnected from each other. To this end, this paper attempts to bridge relevant aspects of mobile technologies in support for collaborative learning and provides a tighter view by means of a multidimensional approach.

Dynamically transitioning between individual and collaborative learning activities during a class session (i.e., in an un-planned way, as-the-need-arises) has advantages for students, but existing orchestration tools are not designed to support such transitions. This work reports findings from a technology probe study that explored alternative designs for classroom co-orchestration support for dynamically transitioning between individual and collaborative learning, focused on how control over the transitions should be divided or shared among teachers, students, and orchestration system. This study involved 1) a pilot in an authentic classroom scenario with AI support for individual and collaborative learning; and 2) design workshops and interviews with students and teachers. Findings from the study suggest the need for hybrid control between students, teachers, and AI systems over transitions as well as for adaptivity and/or adaptability for different classrooms, teachers, and students’ prior knowledge. This study is the first to explore human–AI control over dynamic transitions between individual and collaborative learning in actual classrooms.

Collaborative learning has evolved from traditional classroom teaching to e-learning platforms, at this level of revolution, Educational scenarios for online collaborative learning activities must be carefully designed to make an interactive and engaging learning experience. This research aims to model collaborative educational scenarios within the framework of online learning activities to allow learners to participate in online activities. We discuss the appropriate educational scenario, which combines multimedia content, interaction between the collaborative group, and active learning elements, and then we model this scenario with the UML modeling language. As a result, we represent how the design of educational scenarios, provides a better enhancement of the collaborative learning experience through the use of new technologies so that learners are encouraged to reflect on their learning processes and their group's collaboration, thus promoting better understanding. In conclusion, designing and modeling a collaborative learning educational scenario emphasizes collaboration, interaction, and knowledge acquisition between learners within a collaborative learning activity.

JIGSAW is a well-known technique for collaborative learning. Students typically use it in a face-to-face setting without computer support. This paper describes a Web-based tool for both the preparation of the collaborative learning activities and the execution of the activities. The teachers design and prepare collaborative learning activities and the proposal is they do it in a collaborative way. The system has tools to help teachers do these tasks while, at the same time, they can practice collaborative work and get hands-on experience. Most of these tools are reused to support students to collaboratively learn. The tools are to be used by students in the same sequence and in the same phases as originally described for the unsupported JIGSAW technique. They also work organized as groups and pairs in a face-to-face setting. These tools are not intended as a replacement of the traditional JIGSAW technique. Teachers may find these tools useful as a support for various teaching/learning tasks and for the creation of collaborative learning environments.

A natural concern in the field of computer‐supported collaborative learning is how participants in collaborative learning project attain individual deep understanding through pedagogical or technological support. This study explores such individual outcomes as influenced by designing a collaborative learning project supported with a diagram‐based thinking tool based on cognitive load theory (CLT). A comparative experiment was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the diagram‐based thinking tool. A total of 49 first‐year graduate students were recruited and assigned to two conditions. In the experiment condition, the group students completed the collaborative learning project through a diagram‐based thinking tool, while the group students in the control condition completed the same project through an alternative text‐based thinking tool. Pre‐and posttesting of the domain knowledge was employed to evaluate each individual's learning outcome. Group discourse was employed to evaluate how group students actively engage during collaboration. Results show that the support of diagram‐based thinking tool integrated in collaborative learning can facilitate individual understanding intensively. Moreover, diagram‐based thinking tool can engage group students into cognitively demanding learning activities actively. Findings demonstrate that the semantic diagram tool provides promising technological support when designing collaborative learning project based on CLT. This study serves as a foundation to the design of technological support for future classroom‐based collaborative learning project. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic According to cognitive load theory, the construction of shared knowledge and also the benefit of communication and coordination during social interaction should be optimized when design the collaborative learning. To help learners benefit from social interaction during collaborative learning project, technological support should be carefully designed. External representations have been recognized as one kind of suitable technological affordance for learners’ cognitive and social development. What this paper adds The diagram‐based visible thinking tool with conceptual and socio‐cognitive support integrated in collaborative learning can facilitate individual understanding intensively. The diagram‐based thinking tool with conceptual and socio‐cognitive support can actively engage group students into cognitively demanding learning activities. Implications for practice and/or policy The idea of semantic diagram tool with conceptual and socio‐cognitive support is suitable technological support for effective collaborative learning from the perspective of cognitive load theory. The idea of semantic diagram tool with conceptual and socio‐cognitive support provide teachers with more understandable guidance to design and conduct the collaborative learning project in the classroom.

In this work we present a tool for Adaptive Support for Collaborative and Individual Learning (ASCIL). Taking as a base the fact that learning is not solely an individual nor collaborative process, we have come to the conclusion that it is an integrated activity which requires integral support. We have therefore applied two previously developed systems, AHA! and CLAROLINE, which we have integrated into ASCIL, a system which has the capacity to deliver adaptive support to individuals as well as collaborative learning. The interesting aspect of this present proposal is that the adaptive support for collaborative learning is integrated with the information contained in the User Model (student), which is kept in operation by AHA!. That is to say that the adaptive tasks are the result of individual learning in AHA! as a starting point.

This study explores the situation of basic level community school boy and girl students’ science and health learning through collaborative culture. Fifth, sixth and seventh-grade students (both boys and girls) took part in this study. As per the aim of this study, a set of questionnaire was developed and administered to the sampled students. Two hundred and fifty-eight students were selected from the sampled school using the census sampling technique. All the students were involved in collaborative learning activities such as building trust and open communication, establishing group interaction, respect diversity and sharing creative ideas based on the basic level science and health curriculum aiming at promoting inquiry learning through collaboration. A quantitative analysis involving the use of the Chi-square test at 0.05 level of significance, Likelihood ratio and Somer’s symmetric was conducted to see the association between the variables. The results showed that science and health collaborative learning activities by gender were not associated significantly. There was no statistically significant difference (α=0.05) between the variables studied. The findings showed a weak association with gender and collaborative science and health learning activities in the classrooms.

To achieve the maximum benefit, a collaborative learning activity in the classroom requires effective coordination, synchronization, face-to-face communication, negotiation, interactivity, and participant mobility conditions. In this paper, we perform a usability analysis on a specific collaborative learning activity and identify several problems with fulfilling these conditions. A second usability analysis shows how these problems can be solved with a Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning activity, using wirelessly networked Handhelds. A controlled experiment was run to asses the learning benefit of using Handhelds to support a math-based collaborative learning exercise with seven year old children. Statistically significant results were observed showing that the experimental collaborative learning group using the Handhelds learned more than the control group which had no technological support.

Regulation of the learning process is an important condition for efficient and effective learning. In collaborative learning, students have to regulate their collaborative activities (team regulation) next to the regulation of their own learning process focused on the task at hand (task regulation). In this study, we investigate how support of collaborative inquiry learning can influence the use of regulative activities of students. Furthermore, we explore the possible relations between task regulation, team regulation and learning results. This study involves tenth-grade students who worked in pairs in a collaborative inquiry learning environment that was based on a computer simulation, Collisions, developed in the program SimQuest. Students of the same team worked on two different computers and communicated through chat. Chat logs of students from three different conditions are compared. Students in the first condition did not receive any support at all (Control condition). In the second condition, students received an instruction in effective communication, the RIDE rules (RIDE condition). In the third condition, students were, in addition to receiving the RIDE rules instruction, supported by the Collaborative Hypothesis Tool (CHT), which helped the students with formulating hypotheses together (CHT condition). The results show that students overall used more team regulation than task regulation. In the RIDE condition and the CHT condition, students regulated their team activities most often. Moreover, in the CHT condition the regulation of team activities was positively related to the learning results. We can conclude that different measures of support can enhance the use of team regulative activities, which in turn can lead to better learning results.

Online education has now become an integral part of the educational landscape in the United States and around the world, where it serves as the primary source of enrollment growth in higher education. The rising student population in online learning mandates instructors and instructional designers to be aware of the importance of cultural factors that influence students’ learning experiences and academic performance in the online environments. However, few empirical studies have examined instructors’ perspectives on instructional strategies that promote cross-cultural collaboration in online classrooms, specifically, instructional strategies that instructors use to promote educational success of diverse learners in online environments. Drawing on collaborative online learning theory, this study analyzed qualitative interview data and online activities of 40 online instructors from two universities. Results showed the following themes; (a) instructional strategies that facilitate cross-cultural collaborative online learning, (b) challenges of teaching diverse learners in online learning, and (c) designing cross-cultural collaborative online framework for instructors. Findings suggested that most instructors lacked the knowledge and skills in addressing the needs of diverse learners in the online learning environments regarding their ability to recognize students’ cultural differences and incorporate multicultural reading resources in course contents to meet the needs of diverse students. Thus, the need to design a framework will broaden instructors’ understanding and promote cross-cultural collaboration in online teaching to help meet the needs of diverse students in online learning environments.KEYWORDS: Cross-cultural collaborative learning, culturally diverse learners, collaborative learning activities, instructional strategies, Collaboration in online learning

While 3D virtual worlds are more frequently being used as interactive environments for collaboration, there is still no structured approach developed specifically for the combined design of 3D virtual environments and the collaborative activities in them. We argue that formalizing both the structural elements of virtual worlds and aspects of collaborative work or collaborative learning helps to develop fruitful collaborative work and learning experiences. As such, we present the avatar-based collaboration framework (ABC framework). Based on semiotics theory, the framework puts the collaborating groups into the center of the design and emphasizes the use of distinct features of 3D virtual worlds for use in collaborative learning environments and activities. In developing the framework, we have drawn from best practices in instructional design and game design, research in HCI, and findings and observations from our own empirical research that investigates collaboration patterns in virtual worlds. Along with the framework, we present a case study of its first application for a global collaborative learning project. This paper particularly addresses virtual world designers, educators, meeting facilitators, and other practitioners by thoroughly describing the process of creating rich collaboration and collaborative learning experiences for virtual worlds with the ABC framework.

Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) tools, Asynchronous Discussions in particular, are a significant constituent of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) approaches. DIAS is an asynchronous discussion platform with integrated Interaction Analysis tools, focusing in supporting all the actors (students, teachers, researchers) involved in collaborative discourse learning activities. This paper attempts to explore the step forward from the stage of analysis, interaction analysis in particular, towards the design and implementation of flexible and adaptable asynchronous discussion platforms.

Trends in mobile technology-supported collaborative learning: A systematic review of journal publications from 2007 to 2016