• Review
• This page has a lot of interesting references at the bottom.

• Review
• Near the bottom they mention that in a future version one could implement alot of what we talked about. TA's could be utiliized. Students havve profiles that can be used for collaboration, etc.

• Review
• Not looked into yet.

• Review
• Great book on the classroom. You can read all the chapter of this book from this site.
• CH 1: Lecturing is good for memorization of lower-level factual material but that the lecture method is less effective when measures of long-term knowledge. In order to move what has been learned to long term memory the student must construct their own cognitive structure of the subject. A good way to do this is to teach what you have just learned to another student. Quote by Witman, “When you teach, you learn twice”
• Ch 2: They introduce the concept of "think-pair-share". The lecturer talks about a concept and then ask the students to think about it, and then share their thoughts with a partner. A variation on this is a "Concept Test". Here the lecturer asks the students to write an answer to the question on a sheet of paper. Then the students share this with a neighbor and try to convince them of their point. "Minute Paper": At the end of class have students summarize what was interesting about class in just a few sentences.

• Very high level summary of what collaborative learninging is. Mainly a call to arms with Peer-to-peer learning being the prefered method. Not the most riviting paper.
• No mention of technology. All improvements to be made must be social or simple the way the professor teaches.

• "Cognitive Dissonance Theory states that the existence of disagreement among members of a group produces cognitive dissonance in the individual, who experiences pressure to reduce this dissonance, leading the individual to a process of social communication and revision of his position. The value of the disagreement depends less on the correctness of the opposing position than on the attention, thought processes and learning activities it induces. A coach monitors participation and detects differences between students’ indi-vidual and group work and encourages learning interactions when differences are detected, or when other situations warrant certain advice."

• Currently CSCW encompasses a wide variety of settings, without attempting to formalize such important concepts as:
  • The nature of the collaborative task : puzzle solving, editing a newsletter
  • The nature of the collaborators: peer, teacher-student, student - computer
  • The number of collaborators: 2, 3, 100 ( e.g. a shared hypertext system with entries by many people)
  • The previous relationship between collaborators: how many shared experiences
  • The motivation for collaboration: intrinsic interest, experimenter defined task, money
  • The setting of collaboration: classroom, workplace, home
  • The conditions of collaboration: physically co-present, computer-mediated
  • The time-period of collaboration: minutes, hours, days, weeks, years
• In analyzing/comaring effectiveness of various collaboration technologies, it is vital to take into account the materials, instructors, tasks, and other social factors... "A more appropriate conceptual framework would seek to identify how certain computing environments might contribute to accomplishing activities, rather than viewing activities as being neatly decomposable into isolated tasks that can be allocated to students via different media." There is a tendency to focus too much on features of the technology per se, and not on the learning activity and underlying social, organizational and political processes.
• [Computer-Support Colaborative Environments] could provide opportunities for people perhaps inhibited in social situations to "speak out". One of the people who took little part in the face-to-face sessions became one of the most voluble on the computer medium.
• Once a technology is in place, [...] problems may arise, as expressed in the mentality "If we've got, let's use it". This argument leads to ill-advised attempts to use computers to "support" learning activities, but it is not based on any clear idea of how joint activities will be supported through the technology. In these cases, it is quite possible that the introduction of the computer system may actually result in the disruption of an existing quite adequate collaborative process, rather than its support!

• In electronic learning environments an immediate and shared interpretation of information sometimes may be more difficult to be achieved than in face-to-face situations because of the lack of non-verbal cues such as pointing and nodding (see also Moore, 1993). This can be especially harmful for maintaining a shared focus in argumentative dialogues. ...On the other hand, the lack of physical and psychological cues such as physical appearance, intonation, eye contact, group identity sometimes may lead to democratising effects (Smith, 1994; Steeples et al., 1996). Critical behaviour, therefore, is expected to be less biased towards a tutor or a dominant peer student.

• A good succint analysis of different types of collaboration environments, specifically:
  • Library
  • Solicitation
  • Team
  • Community
  • Process Support

• They did a comprehensive literature review on collaboration. Some of the lessons they present upfront:
  • The online environment fosters fluidity and multiplicity of identity
  • Online communication is characterised by a narrowing of social differences
  • Online communication can be used for shared reflective conversations in communities of practice and in learning contexts
  • The social design is as important as the technological design as a determinant of successful online collaboration.
  • Well designed knowledge sharing and knowledge management tools can support online collaboration
  • Thoughtful choices need to be made concerning the balance of online and face to face communication and the balance of group and individual communication
  • Effective facilitation and shared agreements concerning process contribute to successful online collaboration

• Much of the literature concerning online community and the psychology and sociology of cyberspace emphasizes the fluidity of identity where participants are free to choose their own names and create and communicate new identities to their peers. In a residential educational setting with most online interactions occuring in scheduled lab meetings the online identities are likely to be known and the power dynamic between educators and students is likely to shape the communication especially where there is an assessment incentive for online postings. [...] Nevertheless many evidence from many UCT based projects involving online discussions and chats [...] suggests that many students do communicate more freely in chats and online discussions than they would in a face to face seminar.

• Argues for more informality in online learning (such as "slient" participants)

• A very in-depth theoretical analysis of conversation dynamics in collaborative environments. Some interesting conclusions:
• The collaborative roles as well as the how the tools are used in collaborative contexted is an evolving and adopting process.
• Collaborative discourse is very sensitive to context and time.
• The question of "social norms"/responsibilities in collaborative conversation. (unfortunately the authors don't make any srong conclusion with this regard)
• Other papers on analysis of collaboration/communication dynamics:
  • http://sensei.lsi.uned.es/~bbarros/papers/ijaied2000.pdf
  • http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_1_2003/borges.html
  • http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v8n2/v8n2_campos.asp

• Talks about importance of pre-class preparation work as an essential prerequisite to successfull online collaboration
• Talks a lot about scaffolding and ZPD, i.e. Gerhard will eat it up

• [an advantage of online collaboration] "is that there is no need to wait while others contribute their thoughts; hence there should be less "production blocking," where progress in the learning activity is impeded by a requirement of turn-taking (particularly challenging in large classes) (Reinig 1997)"
• "[participants in a collaborative environment] may fail to map basic conversational norms into the online space"
• "the size of an unthreaded discussion may begin to overwhelm the freedom it initially affords if it fails to cohere"

• This basically the Klicker implemented with PDAs/WiFi

• Learning should not be equated to "schooling", it goes far outside the classroom
• "Activity theory" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_theory, Vygotski et al
• To participate fruitfully in academic discourse, it is crucial for students to understand the nature of scientific knowledge as a process of permanent negotiation. The purpose of collaborative argumentation tasks is to have students externalise, articulate and negotiate alternative perspectives, including reflection on the meaning of arguments put forward by peers as well as experts.
• Not every educational activity is condusive to collaboration. "Bad" examples include assignments where there is a single correct answers (as opposed to assignments that are open-ended), and where the class is competitively structured (e.g. graded on a curve). (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=cache:yGqqu1pG7uwJ:coweb.cc.gatech.edu:8888/csl/uploads/24/CMCI-ICLS-final.pdf+%22Using+An+Unstructured+Collaboration+Tool+to+Support+Peer+Interaction+in+Large+College+Classes%22)
• The social aspects of successful teams should be explicitly taught and not assumed. In order for teams to succeed, certain member qualities must be present. Among those desirable qualities are an ability to clarify and commit to goals, an interest in other team members beyond the task at hand, a desire to confront conflict positively, an understanding of others' perspectives, a commitment to make decisions inclusively, the valuing of individual differences, a willingness to freely contribute ideas and encourage team members, an open and honest evaluation of team performance, and a readiness to celebrate accomplishments (http://www.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed01/2.html)
• "When cameras were a new technology, they were initially used to make movies of stage performances" - a metaphor describing how new collaborative technlogies are rarely used to introduce fundametally new learning environments (http://www.tltgroup.org/resources/Collab_Distance.html)

     *Jeremy Roschelle (2003). Unlocking the learning value  
ofwireless mobile devices. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19
(3), 260-272. http://ctl.sri.com/publications/downloads/
UnlockingWILDs.pdf*  Kaput, J., & Hegedus, S. J. (2002). Exploiting classroom  
connectivity by aggregating student constructions to create new  
learning opportunities. Paper presented at the 26th Conference of the  
International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education,  
Norwich, UK. http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://
www.simcalc.umassd.edu/downloads/KaputHegedusPME2002.pdf&e=747

     *Norris, C., Sullivan, T., Poirot, J., & Soloway, E. (2003). No  
Access, No Use, No Impact: Snapshot Surveys of Educational Technology  
in K-12. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 36(1), 15-28.* Roschelle, J., & Pea, R. (2002). A walk on the WILD side: How  
wireless handhelds may change computer-supported collaborative  
learning. International Journal of Cognition and Technology, 1(1),  
145-168. http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://
newmedia.colorado.edu/cscl/79.pdf&e=747

     *Tatar, D., Roschelle, J., Vahey, P., & Penuel, W. R. (2003).  
Handhelds go to school: Lessons learned. IEEE Computer, 36(9), 30-37.  
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://ctl.sri.com/
publications/downloads/IEEEHandheldsGoToSchool.pdf&e=747* DiGiano, C., Yarnall, L., Patton, C., Roschelle, J., Tatar, D.  
G., & Manley, M. (2003). Conceptual tools for planning for the  
wireless classroom. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19(3),  
284-297.