InstanceCollage: A Tool for the Particularization of Collaborative IMS-LD Scripts

Introduction Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) research aims at enabling new forms of interactions among students to foster learning. Computer support is central in distance collaborative learning environments, but it may be used also to scaffold face to face collaborative activities (Stahl, Koschmann & Suthers, 2006). Technology can play different roles in collaborative learning, including the enabling of interactions in distance settings, scaffolding or guiding collaborative interactions among participants, or providing resources to carry out learning activities (Suthers, 2005). This paper will look into computer support for the guidance of collaborative activities through scripts. In spite of the potential benefits, collaborative learning scenarios do not guarantee learning, as the chances of effective interactions among participants depend on a wide range of factors, including group composition, the environment and the characteristics of collaborative activities (Dillenbourg, 2002). With the objective of structuring and scaffolding the collaborative process, collaboration scripts have been proposed as an effective solution to create conditions in order to promote the chances of effective interactions. Different types of scripts tackle the specification of different features of collaborative scenarios. Typically, collaboration scripts are classified as macro-scripts or micro-scripts (Dillenbourg and Hong, 2008). Micro-scripts describe the communication model between participants (Kobbe et al., 2007), such as argument construction processes. In CSCL settings, software tools that control the communication process and induce students to follow a micro-script have shown to enhance learning (Weinberger, Fischer & Stegmann, 2005). On the other hand, macroscripts model learning objectives, the sequence of activities that participants have to follow, role distribution (Kollar, Fischer & Hesse, 2006), resource distribution, or group formation (Kobbe et al., 2007). Through the configuration of these components, macro-scripts define the pedagogical method of the collaborative activities that students are expected to perform. In a similar fashion as micro-scripts, macro-scripts can also be deployed in software systems, or LMSs. The development of LMSs capable of automatically managing collaborative activities described in a macro-script is an active research topic in the CSCL community. This kind of LMSs can, according to the collaborative learning strategy that drives a macro-script, manage groups of students, control activity schedules and task distribution, and provide students with resources and collaborative software tools. In order to adapt the LMSs behavior to the content of a script, formal specifications have been proposed. A formal specification for learning scripts provides a model and a computational representation to describe the features of a learning setting, which can be interpreted by software systems. In the case of macro-scripts, IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2003), the de facto standard to model learning scripts, enables the description of activity sequences, groups/roles, task distribution, etc. Currently different authoring tools and players have been developed, facilitating the task of creating IMS-LD scripts and their enactment in software systems in real learning scenarios. Designed as pedagogically neutral, IMS-LD has been also used to model collaborative activities (Tattersall, 2006). In spite of certain limitations (Miao, Hoeksema, Hoppe & Harrer, 2005), such as the lack of mechanisms to describe complex activity sequences (Harrer & Malzalm, 2006), it has been argued that MS-LD provides sufficient support for relevant features of CSCL macro-scripts (Hernandez-Leo, Burgos, Tattersall & Kopper, 2007; Koper & Burgos, 2005), and has actually been used as the computational representation format of CSCL scripts by the Collage authoring tool (Hernandez-Leo et al. …