Technology Tools for Scripted Collaborative Learning: The Case of the Reload
Learning Design Player

Nikos P. Michailidis, Stavros N. Demetriadis
Computer Science Department
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki, Greece
{nmicha, sdemetri}@csd.auth.gr


Abstract—Efficient design of computer-supported collaborative
learning activities is a key precondition in order to motivate
teachers to implement CSCL in their courses. Except for the
necessity for high-level IMS-LD compliant authoring tools, it is
of equal importance to smoothly execute the collaborative
Learning Designs and, thus, there is a need for LD compliant
players to successfully implement LD in real educational
settings. This work presents a CSCL pilot case study, for
evaluating the Reload Learning Design Player. In the case
study, postgraduate students rehearse two topics in order to
develop a deeper understanding of them, following the Jigsaw
collaborative learning technique. The paper introduces the
objectives and context of the case study, elaborates on how the
Reload Player was employed, depicts the applied evaluation
methodology and discusses the most significant findings
derived from the case study.
Keywords-CSCL; case study; scripted collaborative learning;
IMS Learning Design; enactment tool; Reload Player
I. INTRODUCTION
Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a
branch of the learning sciences concerned with studying how
people can learn together with the help of computers [1].
Nevertheless, free collaboration among learners does not
automatically produce learning. According to Dillenbourg
[2], the effectiveness of collaborative learning can be
increased by structuring the interactions between students.
These structured interactions are defined in collaboration
scripts. A collaboration script is a set of instructions
describing a collaborative learning scenario in terms of the
activities to be performed by participants, the interactions
between learners while performing such activities as well as
the characteristics of tools that should be employed to
support each activity [7].
In order for these scripts to be interpreted and reused by
computer applications, it has been proposed to formalize
them using IMS Learning Design (LD) [3, 4]. LD is an
educational modeling language that enables the description
of learning scenarios. It can describe a wide variety of
pedagogical models including group work and collaborative
learning. The language outlines how learners perform
activities using resources (including contents and services)
and how these three components are coordinated into a
learning flow. The set of learning activities designed by the
teacher and expressed in IMS-LD is called a Unit of
Learning (UoL) [5].
However, creating and enacting effective collaboration
scripts formalized in IMS-LD may be daunting tasks for
teachers and students, even if they have previous experience
in collaborative learning. This is because LD defines a
structured XML-based language that may be hard to use [8].
Therefore, authoring and enactment tools are needed to
facilitate the elaboration of collaboration scripts without the
need of technical knowledge, employing representations and
abstractions that are easy to understand and use [6].
Against this background, this paper describes a CSCL
pilot case study for evaluating a script enactment tool named
Reload Player. This tool guides and coordinates the groups
of learners throughout the flow of learning activities defined
in a collaboration script, formalized using IMS-LD. The
main goal of this paper is to provide evaluation evidence
regarding the strong and weak points of the Reload Player in
a real educational setting.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section 2
presents a review of technology tools capable of supporting
scripted collaborative learning, while section 3 describes the
Reload Player. The collaborative learning scenario of the
presented case study is described in section 4. Section 5
focuses on the description of the methodology employed for
evaluating the case study and for presenting and discussing
the main findings. Finally, conclusions and future research
can be found in section 6.
II. A REVIEW OF TECHNOLOGY TOOLS FOR SCRIPTED
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
The authors of [11] devised a framework for LD tools
based on a survey of existing tools and their analysis of the
different needs of the different user roles. Their framework
identifies two key dimensions: the specificity of tools
(general purpose or suited to a specific task), and how
closely they follow the specification (are they designed for
use in conjunction with the specification, or in a more
general sense, as tools to assist in the design of learning).
Tools can be classified according to these two criteria and
associated with the needs of specific user roles [15]. In this
sense, high-level collaborative LD compliant tools will be
more appropriate for educators and learners in real
educational settings, which are usually not familiar with the
IMS-LD specification.
Tools such as the Reload LD Editor [10] (now
superseded by the new ReCourse LD Editor) or Ask-LDT
[16] provide a high-level graphical interface which covers
the entire specification. However, this approach lacks a way
2009 Fourth Balkan Conference in Informatics
978-0-7695-3783-2/09 $25.00 © 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/BCI.2009.8
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