Facilitating collaboration in virtual environments

Abstract

The evolution of learning systems brought improvements to the functionality of their components by offering support and mediating learning, communication and collaboration. However, there are still existing barriers caused by the lack of face to face contact between users. Through our research we aim to provide novel means for supporting the social cohesion of the groups and personalize the e-learning spaces by offering adaptive support in group forming and collaboration processes. As a first step in designing a filtering tool for an adaptive system which recommends application and activities for collaboration within the group, we designed a series of experimental studies on different components of an e-learning system to find out what initiates, influences and increases the level of collaboration between learners. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.