An Ambient Awareness Tool for Supporting Supervised Collaborative Problem Solving

We describe an ambient awareness tool, named Lantern, designed for supporting the learning process in recitation sections, (i.e., when students work in small teams on the exercise sets with the help of tutors). Each team is provided with an interactive lamp that displays their work status: the exerc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on learning technologies 2012-07, Vol.5 (3), p.264-274
Main Authors: Alavi, H. S., Dillenbourg, P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ambient user interface
Calculus
Collaboration
Collaborative work
College Mathematics
College Students
Computer Uses in Education
Computer-supported collaborative learning
Cooperative Learning
Educational institutions
Foreign Countries
Group Behavior
human tutoring
Image color analysis
Introductory Courses
Materials
Monitoring
Problem Solving
Student Behavior
Switzerland
Teacher Student Relationship
Tutoring
Use Studies
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Summary:We describe an ambient awareness tool, named Lantern, designed for supporting the learning process in recitation sections, (i.e., when students work in small teams on the exercise sets with the help of tutors). Each team is provided with an interactive lamp that displays their work status: the exercise they are working on, if they have called for help, since when, and on which exercise. Lantern, by providing this information, is meant to facilitate the interaction between tutors and teams, and to encourage collaboration among students. We report on a user study that examines the impact of Lantern on individual and group behavior in recitation sections. The results show how Lantern can improve the efficiency of tutor-teams interaction, increase the intrateam collaboration, and improve the structure of interteam communications. On the other hand, having a minimalist design, and being embedded in the classroom environment, it avoids diverting the focus of students from their main task and fades quickly in the periphery when not used.
ISSN:1939-1382
1939-1382
2372-0050
DOI:10.1109/TLT.2012.7