Copyright 1998, the International AIED Society.
Communication skills play a prominent role in the primary school curriculum.
Children are first expected to acquire these skills within a supervised group environment in which the teacher guides and sets the pace for the discussion, and later transfer them to a less dependent setting. This paper describes BetterBlether , a computer mediated educational communication tool designed to facilitate and promote effective group interaction skills. In so doing, it provides support for the move from teacher dominated discussions to ones in which the pupils play a more active part. We first provide an overview of BetterBlether before going on to describe an empirical evaluation which was carried out in a local primary school.