Teaching Dimension in Web-Based Learning Communities

Abstract

The article tackles the issue of the teaching dimension in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) contexts. In particular, it describes two Web-based courses that were held in 2006—one by the Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche – CNR and one by the University of Genoa, which, while sharing the socioconstructivist theoretical framework, adopt different approaches as far as the teaching dimension is concerned: While in the former course tutors were asked to cover all the functions typically required by e-tutors, in the latter, experience functions were distributed across a variety of actors. The aim of the work is to foster reflections about strong points and weaknesses of the two approaches, thus leading to considerations concerning the applicability of the models even in contexts different from the original ones.