Ilaria Manno

CoFFEE : Cooperative Face2Face educational environment

Co-located collaboration in classroom is the topic we tackle in this paper. We present COFFEE a tailorable collaborative environment that is designed for interactive, co-located (i.e. Face2Face) collaboration in classroom. We present the requirements for tailorability that have driven our design, CoFFEE architecture, some tools that have been deployed and discuss the latecomer management issue that is offered by the core of our architecture to all the tools that can be developed within the framework.

A Tailorable Infrastructure to Enhance Mobile Seamless Learning

The widespread use of mobile devices is leading towards their adoption in the learning process, even if some pedagogical challenges are still not fully addressed when integrating mobile-assisted activities into regular curricula activities. In this paper, we first define some guidelines to design a general, tailorable, and platform-independent mobile learning system. Second, we present the aCME system, a mobile infrastructure, developed by adhering to the defined guidelines, to provide a general-purpose system, easy to start up with and friendly to user, and finally, tailorable, i.e., that can be easily adapted to the needs of different learning environments. The aCME system has been implemented as a Web-based architecture, to provide content and functionalities for different contexts, accessible from any location and by using any communication device. Finally, we describe a tool, deployed into aCME, that allows responding to quiz-based questionnaires during learning activities. A preliminary evaluation was performed to analyze usability and user satisfaction when interacting with the system we developed. The paper is concluded with some comments and future research directions.

Face to Face Cooperation with CoFFEE

Co-located collaboration in classroom is the topic we tackle in this paper. In particular we will describe how CoFFEE implements this kind of collaboration. CoFFEE is an extensible platform on which to implement different collaborative tools. Every tool renders a different kind cooperation between users. In this paper we will also provide further details in about the newly implemented tools for collaboration, the Repository, the Positionometer and the Co-Writer.

A Flexible and Tailorable Architecture for Scripts in F2F Collaboration

In this paper we introduce the architecture of the script engine of a collaborative co-located discussion support system, named CoFFEE , and, in particular, we describe its extendibility and flexibility as a macro-script engine for CSCL activities [7].

Argumentation tools in a collaborative development environment

In the field of Computer Supported Collaborative Work several studies have explored the possibility to improve the collaboration in software development teams by integrating into IDEs tools to support the coordination and sharing of common resources. Similar studies have emphasized the need of integrating into IDEs collaboration and communication functionalities to improve the building of a shared knowledge. In this paper we describe how we enhanced Rational Team Concert (an IBM CDVE built on Eclipse and Jazz) with structured communication tools by integrating a collaborative platform named CoFFEE, that was developed for structured argumentation and discussion in an educational setting.

Computer-Supported WebQuests

WebQuests are among the most popular techniques to enhance collaboration in learning; they are an inquiry-based activity, grounded on constructivist learning theory, where the information that learners interact with is mostly found on the Internet. We present here a system that offers computer-support during a WebQuest, by offering a structured discussion and debate space, besides the navigation and resource sharing. We integrate the WebQuest design process with an operational design phase and describe how our system can completely support the design of a computer-supported WebQuest.

CoFFEE: An Expandable and Rich Platform for Computer- Mediated, Face-to-Face Argumentation in Classroom

CoFFEE (Collaborative Face to Face Educational Environment) is a suite of applications that has been designed to let teachers and students cooperate during classroom discussions. Teachers can author and design CoFFEE sessions, where each step includes instances of different cooperative tools chosen in a significantly large set (more than 10 tools are currently available). The session is, then, executed in classroom/lab where the collaborative discussion takes place. All CoFFEE tools are highly configurable and, thanks to the concept of session, the functionalities can be adapted for schools of different grade and even for university courses. From a technological point of view CoFFEE is an expandable framework: new collaborative functionalities can be added as autonomous components; each component can be developed independently from each other, sharing a common user interface. This result has been achieved by building CoFFEE as a rich framework since it offers a consistent set of basic services that can be used as building blocks for totally new collaborative components.

Free-riding in collaborative diagrams drawing

In this paper, we study the issue of free-riding in collaborative learning. Free-riding occurs when a part of the students lean on the efforts of the rest of their team and do not contribute much to the team work. It impacts negatively on performances of the whole team [1]. We present an experiment of collaborative diagram drawing (through a synchronous collaborative drawing tool, called Shared Drawing tool) in a Software Engineering course, that shows a significant equal participation and suggests that students employ some self-regulatory behaviors that results in fruitful collaboration.