Adding constraints to a virtual course using a formal approach to the interactions in collaborative learning

Abstract

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is a research area whose central aspects are the concepts of interaction and participation in an educational way. Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods give interesting solutions to the construction of CSCL systems [8, 9]. However, in order to establish the learning model it is necessary to formalize the concept of interaction, hence the organization and structure of the process must be defined. The use of collaborative learning favours a distribution of knowledge in communities which improves working within a group. There have been a great deal of empirical research and theoretical issues in collaborative learning that have offered different approaches on how to learn in a group. At the moment, the most important goal is to analyse the group as a unit. The system can be treated as some independent cognitive units which exchange messages or as a single cognitive system which has own laws. The initial problem was to analyse whether and under what constraints collaborative learning was more efficient than individual learning. Recently the question has shifted in both theoretical and empirical terms, and researchers are trying to understand the role of interactions which appear in collaborative web-based educational systems. This change requires new tools and methods for the analysis and modelling of interactions. However, collaborative learning is not only a frame which has positive effects on the students. Collaboration is a complex social structure in which two or more people interact with each other and where some interactions occur with interesting effects. It is necessary to stop using general concepts and start fixing categories of interactions. In the educational community, some people use collaboration and cooperation interchangeably. Cooperation is a division of the labour among participants, as an activity where each person is responsible for a portion of the problem, whereas collaboration is a mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve the problem together. Defining collaboration as the non-distribution of labour does not avoid the problem. Some division of tasks may occur in collaboration: for example, the student who has more to explain about the problem takes the tutor role, while the others become observers, monitoring the situation. The observers can contribute by criticizing and giving different points of view. Cooperation and collaboration do not differ in terms of whether or not the task is distributed. In cooperation the problem is divided into independent sub-problems; in collaboration, cognitive processes may be divided into intertwined layers. In cooperation, coordination is only required when assembling partial results, while collaboration is "a coordinated synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem" [1, 2]. In this work is described a formal description of the interactions which are produced among the students on a virtual course. This course should be integrated into a collaborative web-based educational system. In order to specify where and under what constraints collaborative learning is more effective, the system must be characterized by a set of parameters, which include those referring to interactions. We define the variables that permit the interactions to be studied in a formal and systematic way. A virtual course is thereby designed and the integrated constraints required are given. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2008.