Real-time educational groupware systems allow physically separated learners to work together in a shared virtual workspace at the same time. These systems do not yet approach the interaction richness of a face-to-face learning situation. In particular, one element poorly supported is workspace awareness: the up-to-the-minute knowledge a student requires about other students ’ interactions with the shared workspace. This awareness is essential if students are to learn and work together effectively. We present a framework of several types of awareness required by students in a collaborative learning situation, including their social, task, concept and workspace awareness. We then concentrate on workspace awareness, and describe how particular awareness requirements of students in group learning situations depend on the closeness of their tasks, and whether they are sharing the same view or have separate views into the workspace. From these requirements, we have prototyped several awareness widgets for educational groupware. These widgets help learners maintain awareness of other learners ’ locations when their views are separated, of other learners ’ activities in shared and separate view situations, and of other learners ’ past activities.

Abstract: The importance of collaborative and social learning processes is well established, as is the utility of external representations in supporting learners ' active expression, examination and manipulation of their own emerging knowledge. However, research on how computerbased representational tools may support collaborative learning is in its infancy. This paper motivates such a line of research, sketches a theoretical analysis of the roles of constraint and salience in the representational guidance of collaborative learning discourse, and reports on an initial study that compared textual, graphical, and matrix representations. Differences in the predicted direction were observed in the amount of talk about evidential relations and the use of epistemological categories.

strategies and tools must be based on some theory of learning and cognition. Of course, crafting well-articulated views that clearly answer the major epistemological questions of human learning has exercised psychologists and educators for centuries. What is a mind? What does it mean to know something? How is our knowledge represented and manifested? Many educators prefer an eclectic approach, selecting “principles and techniques from the many theoretical perspectives in much the same way we might select international dishes from a smorgasbord, choosing those we like best and ending up with a meal which represents no nationality exclusively and a design technology based on no single theoretical base ” (Bednar et al., 1995, p. 100). It is certainly the case that research within collaborative educational learning tools has drawn upon behavioral, cognitive information processing, humanistic, and sociocultural theory, among others, for inspiration and justification. Problems arise, however, when tools developed in the service of one epistemology, say cognitive information processing, are integrated within instructional

Abstract: In this paper, we describe an intervention for children with social and communication deficits, such as autism, based on the use of a virtual peer that can engage in tightly collaborative narrative. We present a study in which children with autism engage in collaborative narrative with both a virtual and a human peer, and the use of contingent discourse is compared. Our findings suggest that contingent discourse increased over the course of interaction with a virtual peer, but not a human peer. Furthermore, topic management, such as introducing new topics or maintaining the current topic, was more likely to occur with the virtual peer than with the human peer. We discuss general implications of our work for understanding the role of peer interactions in learning.

The Belvedere software environment was designed to support students engaged in collaborative learning while solving ill-structured problems requiring integration of multiple sources of data to evaluate competing hypotheses or solutions. Students are posed with web-based “science challenge problems,” which present a recent or current debate in science along with on-line articles, data, and suggestions for hands-on data-gathering activities. Students use the Belvedere inquiry-diagramming facility to record hypotheses under consideration, information gathered, and the evidential relations between them. Preliminary studies with Belvedere suggest that the design of representational tools can have a significant effect on the learners’ knowledge-building discourse. However, these effects are insufficiently studied. After several years of laying the groundwork by building and deploying such software, the author and colleagues have begun such an in-depth investigation, examining the effects of textual, diagrammatic and tabular representational tools on the quality of knowledge-building discourse between learners. The paper describes the Belvedere work that led to this position, lays out a research agenda, and describes pilot studies now underway.

This paper discusses how a group leader computer tutor may aid students in learning collaborative skills in a co-operative learning environment. However, students need to learn collaborative skills and practice using them. The group leader computer tutor discussed in this paper is designed on the principles of co-operative learning, intelligent tutoring systems and computer-supported collaborative work within an intelligent collaborative learning system (ICLS). The group leader aims to facilitate group work on the task level and to teach students how to use collaborative skills in the discussion level as students work on networked computers in the Jigsaw method of co-operative learning. The ICLS and its group leader were used by two classes at a liberal arts university. Qualitative research shows that the students' co-operative attitudes changed and academic achievement improved from pre- to post-treatment. Students, especially, used the communication skill of openness in comment type

In this paper we present a general framework, called NUCLEO, for the application of socio-constructive educational approaches in higher education. The underlying pedagogical approach relies on an adaptation model in order to improve group dynamics, as this has been identified as one of the key features in the success of collaborative learning scenarios. Students ’ learning strategies are analyzed considering a simplified version of Vermunt’s model for learning styles. The resulting profiles provide the basis to group students in teams where each student is assigned a role according to his/her learning strategies. The result is the formation of complementary and semi-autonomous learning teams that collaborate to achieve solutions to the problems provided by the instructor. The framework is instantiated through an online multiplayer role-playing game environment, which sets a stage for the underlying collaborative problem-based learning approach. The framework has been benchmarked in different programming courses at the Complutense University of Madrid during 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years. This work also presents the results of these experiences.

Fifteen thousand years ago, the Paleolithic denizens of the Lascaux, Pechmerle or Altamira caves labored to represent aspects of reality which were vital to their life: the animals on which they fed. A crucial motivation for these creations was suggested to be their belief in the power inherent in the representations and imitations of reality to affect and modify aspects of that reality (Hauser, 1951; Fisher, 1963). The hunter who masqueraded as the animal he wished to hunt, and who through identification with the animal intended to increase the yield of the hunt, used the power of imitation to control reality. The cave paintings were not just representations of reality; they were conceived as reality itself (real virtuality?…), and any action directed at them (such as the throwing of arrows or the casting of spears) signified an action affecting a reality destined to take place (virtual reality?…). The representations are a human creation, but their presentation on the walls of the cave evoked a complex relationship between the creator and his creation with regard to the represented reality. In more contemporary terms, this situation can be seen as ancient evidence of the reciprocal relationships between the means and products of knowledge-technology, and the thoughts and beliefs of the creator of these technological means and products.

The research reported in this paper is part of an ongoing research program investigating computer support of coherent reasoning in individuals and groups. Drawing from research investigating reasoning with a theory-based computer model, we have developed a computer learning environment designed to help students create, manage, and evaluate arguments. In attempting to "convince" the Convince Me program, students are encouraged to reflect on their reasoning strategies. We present results from a classroom intervention that highlight how the program's representations provide a structure for collaborative argument building and mediate communication among students, prompting them to engage in shared explanatory and reflective activity. The results also suggest that feedback from the program's simulation of argument coherence encourages even greater student reflection on argument construction and evaluation.

2 This paper presents further elaboration on the claim that the development of knowledge, skills and cognitive processes is influenced by the demands and constraints presented by available knowledge technologies. From this perspective, cognitive processes are viewed not just as a basic characteristic of mind, but also as a consequence of the interaction between cognitive structures and cognitive technologies. Knowledge or cognitive technologies may be defined as all the means (either instrumental or methodological) which contribute to the completion and expansion of the natural abilities of the human mind, in processes relating to the handling of knowledge, thinking, learning and solving problems. Between the paintings in the prehistoric caves ' walls, and the feats of virtual reality that are materializing before our very eyes today, lies a rich history of the development of knowledge technologies. In this paper I refer to nine approaches for analyzing and discussing the interaction between cognitive processes and cognitive technologies, along with their implication for education. From these different perspectives cognitive