Building interfaces for on-line collaborative learning
For several years we have been engaged in the development and research of software environments for collaborative learning, for example in the recently completed CoLabs project (which we presented at the IFIP TC3 WG3.5 working conference in Budapest in 2004, see also http://matchsz.inf.elte.hu/Colabs/), also within lately defended long-range doctoral research, in which the co-author of this paper together with his undergraduate students had developed and evaluated cooperative computer activities for children aged 10 to 18. They observed children when using those environments and studied the influence of different approaches and solutions on the degree of their involvement and will to cooperate. We have also been involved in the London Knowledge Lab pilot project for developing a collaborative layered learning space travel games construction kit. Our departments prior engagement in the development of collaborative activities also includes publishing a popular on-line journal (developed by A. Hrusecka and D. Lehotska, this on-line journal (in Slovak) can proudly boast up to 250,000 visits per month) for children, which intensively exploits on-line collaboration. This topic attracts us not only as a support for the learning process, but is a challenge for us as developers of educational programming tools as well. In our SuperLogo and Imagine environments we have always tried to provide users (ranging from children to developers) with new and powerful options to foster learning by exploring and developing. Thus we have equipped Imagine with the means for building objects and their behaviours in incremental loops, with parallel independent processes, event-driven programming and complex yet intuitive support for developing on-line environments for collaborative learning. In this paper we place our collaborative applications in the context of other related interfaces reported in literature. We use eight criteria to classify them and conclude that collaborative applications being developed by us and our studentsfuture teachersare distinguishable from others along two or three of those criteria: they combine in themselves typical features of Logo microworlds and inspiring support for on-line cooperation. We then analyze in detail our collaborative Imagine microworlds along four dimensions of their development. We specify means for establishing and maintaining on-line connection among any number of participants. We study tools for sending and receiving items (data, active characters with their behaviours, instructions etc.). We reflect on what can be shared by two or more participants in a collaborative activity. We examine all possible operations with common and private characters of a participant from the collaboration point of view. Our goals in this research and development are to: 1. Better understand potential the interfaces for on-line collaboration offer to support the learning process,  2. Place our Imagine Logo microworlds into context of other related applications,  3. Build a detailed map of all aspects important for their development (i.e., build a framework for the development),  4. Present the observations from our long-range experimental development and evaluation of the collaborative environments,  5. Point out how simple and natural it is (in the academic surroundings) to develop small and yet powerful collaborative microworldsbuilt for instance for immediate need in a classroomwith exceptional potential for interaction and openness.  Most of all, however, we want to motivate the endeavour to overcome all obstacles connected with the integration of on-line cooperation into childrens learning.
on-line collaboration imagine logo microworlds framework for development