Background

Research of the COLLIDE group and laboratory is oriented towards designing, implementing, and testing innovative computing systems for open distributed learning environments. Here, "open" indicates that the learning environments and support systems are not conceived as self-containing but as embedded in a realistic social and organizational environment.

Accordingly, our current focus of research is on group learning in distributed environments. We are well aware that this is not only a technical challenge, but also pedagogical claims concerning the benefits of learning in a group have to be substantiated. As a working hypothesis, we assume that wherever communication and collaboration processes are themselves pedagogical goals and not only means, group learning should be an adequate mode.

Practical group learning may be facilitated by the following technical scenarios:

COMPUTER-INREGRATED CLASSROOM

It is an enrichment of the typical teacher-moderated classroom situation, including phases of exposition or presentation as well as supervised exercises and discussions. We primarily design for the presence situation, though "virtual classrooms" with remote interaction are also an issue. Our basic CiC comprises a LiveBoard and local student computers (notebooks or tablets), all locally networked and with access to the Internet. Specific software components are shared workspace tools for different domains, a general "discussion board", a tool for taking and collecting individual notes, electronic worksheets that can be distributed and collected by the teacher, and intelligent monitoring tools that can give both individual feedback as well as information for the teacher.

TUTORIAL HOTLINE

A tutorial hotline complements the use of self-study material by contacting a remote human tutor. Technically, we rely on shared workspaces or shared documents plus an audio or audio+video channel.

PEER HELP

In groups that are freely distributed over the network, peer helpers are determined based on previous assessment and given difficulties (cf. "multiple student modeling", Hoppe 1995).