Alternative ways of monitoring collaboration

Abstract: Teachers of networked collaborative classrooms, with multiple groups interacting in parallel, need assistance for better understanding and regulating the learning process. They may use tools that collect and process students ’ activity data, and generate views of students ’ activities. Classroom management tools may be used to observe and control students ’ screens, but often fail to exploit interaction data. We present the results of a study where teachers used a classroom management environment to monitor students ’ collaborative activities, and a discussion of the alternative views provided by a cscl tool, designed for teacher’s support. Monitoring Groups ’ Collaborative activities: A task for the teacher In CSCL research community there is an increasing interest in the design of tools that support students ’ computer mediated collaborative learning. Tool designers build tools for students and teachers; however they seem to pay more attention on students ’ needs than on teachers ’ (Dimitracopoulou 2005). Examples of teacher tools include Prof-CHENE with a communication space for the teacher, that was used to investigate, the nature of knowledge of teachers on students collaborative problem solving (Baker et al 2001). González and Suthers (2002) have proposed a pedagogical agent that helps students collaborate while solving Entity Relationship modeling problems in COLER. The generated advice, during online intervention, was based primaril