LEAD - Problem solving through face to face networked interaction in the classroom

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LEAD Research blog

The value of CoFFEE in for networked discussions has been explored by over 400 learners and 30 staff and our research has shown that CoFFEE improves the experience of debate in four key ways:

A)    Flexibility: CoFFEE can be used in a wide variety of learning situations as it can be adapted to specific learning situation by means of pedagogical scenarios. The use of scenarios results in a networked learning environment that overcomes the known “not made here” problem by providing the opportunities for COFFEE enhanced lessons to be adapted exactly to the nature of the situation. 

B)     Parallelism: The opportunity to use CoFFEE to conduct parallel discussions provides significant opportunities for increased productivity and participation. Comparisons between oral and CoFFEE mediated discussions showed significantly greater contributions in the CoFFEE classroom. As students use CoFFEE to discuss their learning task, they can simultaneously put forward contributions in the shared workspace as they don’t have to wait for their turn. Students can work at their pace, they have enough time to think about an issue, and are they are given the time to formulate their ideas into words. Contributing to the discussion via an electronic medium is also perceived as less socially threatening than oral communication, where students have to speak in front of their peers. This allows for less dominant voices to emerge, thus enhancing not only the quantity of the discussion, but also its quality.

C)    Productivity: CoFFEE’s permanent record of activity provides support for students to build and refine knowledge both during and after the session. It also allows staff to monitor parallel activities in order to better orchestrate and assess students’ work. Subjects where emphasis is on discussion of open ended questions are less likely to involve production of standard artefacts such as essays, summaries, tests, and other standard products aimed at revision or assessment purposes. Indeed, it is very rare for students to even take notes of the discussions taking place in face to face debates. CoFFEE resolves these problems as debates are now in persistent media not transient media (speech).

D)    Anonymity: Oral communication in the classroom necessarily reveals the identity of those speaking. However, CoFFEE allows for students identity to be hidden from one another. Generally, anonymity in Computer Mediated Communication has been shown to reduce inequalities between group members leading to more equal participation and influence across group discussions.

To the less technologically oriented, it simply means that now additional pieces of CoFFEE (call it CoFFEE-beans :-) can be developed, installed on top of an existing CoFFEE installation.

It is not as simple as that. It means that we can encourage independent programmers to develop new tools, and add them to an existing CoFFEE and.. voilà, you get an additional tool available to the standrd applications such as the Session Editor, CoFFEE Controller and CoFFEE Discusser!

A couple of plugins are already being worked on by some students in DIA, for their thesis: a streaming tool (to stream movies, webcams, etc.) and a 3D world explorer tool. But the good news is that in September/October there will also be a CoFFEE programming environment to produce new plugins more easily than ever! With a few clicks, the entire architecture of a plugin will be available to the programmer. and she/he will have only to "fill-in the blanks"!

Giovanna Ammaturo, Mariella Luciani and I were there to present CoFFEE, together with four of my students from the University of Bari (after they were trained by Giovanna). About 30 teachers attended the presentation.

A group of about 10 people (mix of teachers and researchers) went on to test and use CoFFEE. We ended the session with them by designing a new pedagogical scenario about evolution. A few teachers were really interested, and Mariella and Giovanna will follow up the contact with them. One of those teachers has already committed to trying out the evolution scenario in her classroom, once school starts again. Mariella and Giovanna will be in touch with that teacher.

It seems a small result but it is not. It is often very hard to get teachers involved in new technology initiatives, and yet the interest CoFFEE attracted during the summer school was considerable. The adoption of CoFFEE in the classroom is not guaranteed, but we have seen for ourselves that CoFFEE is ready for the tasks we set for it.

 

Beatrice Ligorio, DSE/University of Bari

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21st of January, 2008

Planning with CoFFEE

 

One of the challenges for education in our time is to deliver sufficiently skilled professional workers to participate in 21st century economy. In order to meet this challenge, vocational students have to be better prepared for their role in society and their learning careers have to be prolonged. For this reason, the Dutch vocationaleducation system has been thoroughly reorganised. Not surprisingly, policy makers expect technology to have a positive impact on new ways of learning.

Minkema College in the town of Woerden is one such vocational school. It has initiated new programmes to meet the challenges of our time and has recently started a pilot programme called "new technical learning", to prepare students to make better informed decisions about their school careers. In this pilot programme, students have to perform project work covering various domains, collaborate in dyads, and work relatively independently from their teachers. This new way of working contains far less structure than the former, "traditional" work method. Tools from the LEAD project were implemented within the pilot programme to enhance this new classroom practice.

The pilot project at Minkema College induces a transition from a teacher-centred classroom to a classroom where students have to plan, carry out and evaluate their learning activities themselves. This transition is a major challenge to students and teachers alike. In order to cope with it, students have to develop collaboration and planning skills. This is where the LEAD toolscome into the picture.

The collaboration between LEAD and Minkema College resulted in the development of a "planning problem" pedagogical scenario. In this scenario, students are presented with a graphical discussion tool to jointly construct their project plan. This tool – a component of the CoFFEE environment - provides the students with a shared workspace and with "representational guidance" such as a predefined notation scheme and a timeline. Results of the scenario are promising, and what is more, the students are enthusiastic about the new work method.

The joint effort between the LEAD project and the dedicated group of teachers at Minkema is now in its second year. Recently the collaboration has been scaled up to include third and fourth year learners. The CoFFEE system runs successfully on the schools’ network, and is easily accessible for all students. It seems that CoFFEE is in it for the long run.

Maarten Overdijk, UU

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6th of July 2007

Face to face learning in Second Life

A small delegation from LEAD met in second life to experience a virtual face-to-face situation. The LEAD group was treated to a tour at Helicon, the SL site of Helicon, an group of land-based schools in the Netherlands. The tour leaders - Angela Graat van Overbeeke and	click to enlarge
Monique Witlam - showed what Helicon has done for their students (financed by . In an environment containing meetingrooms, virtual horses, presentations, movies, a library and more, students learn to make presentations and organize events.

It's obvious that SL is still a pioneering environment with lots of things that don't really work yet, but Helicon shows what a wonderful collaborative learning environment it could be.

From the LEAD-point of view it's interesting to see how much overhead such a virtual face-to-face system brings with it. My opinion is that for the time being face-to-face learning using technology as we're researching in LEAD seems at an advantage for real learning. But future versions of SL might very well be able to replace some of the social interaction that is needed in education processes.

Check it out: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Helicon%20Campus/124/114/23

Michiel Klønhammer, ICATT interactive media, Amsterdam

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29th of June 2007

Online research, Face-to-face learning

The month May was a very busy month for the LEAD team. At the end of May we had to deliver the research evaluation plan and the first (official) version of the software application. These deliverables required the combined effort of various people who were located in different places. In other words, the LEAD team needed to collaborate on a distance. That’s not an easy job, even with various networked computing technologies we used to bridge the distance. It made me wonder what is missing in distance communication.

A lot of things are so obvious in the face-to-face communication that we hardly miss it when they are gone. Humor is a good example. Laughing together about a joke seems to be crucial for developing a bond between partners. It is at least one of the most valuable non-task related activities during our project team meetings.

Telling a joke requires some vividness in communication. The situation is also crucial. Good timing determines the success of a joke. A face-to-face situation provides us with a fast amount of signals crucial for the proper timing. When we communicate on-line these signals seems to vanish. Happily, we can protect ourselves from bad timing. We signal when a joke has been made and invite our audience to laughJ.

Wouter van Diggelen, UU

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3rd of May 2007

The pieces fit together

As the LEAD consortium is heading towards its alpha version of the software at the end of May, the strength of the consortium is becoming clear. Both in Salerno and in St. Etienne developers are working hard (with a little help from Holland) towards the deadline. As a quality manager of such a project it's very exciting for me to watch the process.

It's obvious that not everything can be controlled at every point in time - the teams are professional and carry their own responsibilities. It's such a reward when the parts start fitting together as they are now.

Our alpha release is the start of the new phase of the project, where the software is taken into schools and the research is done by our pedagogical partners. Sign up for our newsletter and we'll keep you posted.

Michiel Klønhammer, ICATT interactive media, Amsterdam

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30 March 2007

Welcome to our blog!

After our First year of LEAD we think we have things to tell the visitors of this website about our various activities. This is the year in which we have the first prototype of the tool to experiment with, in various classroom contexts. Also, we are going to produce analyses and texts that tell about our previous year's efforts.

This blog serves for our researchers to communicate to the world what they have been doing and what they are up to now. If you are interested in more systematic scrutiny of our project, please join our ….group.

I wish you happy explorations of our work.

Jerry Andriessen