In distance education courses with a large number of students and groups, the organization and facilitation of collaborative writing tasks are challenging. Teachers need support for planning, specification, execution, monitoring, and evaluation of collaborative writing tasks in their course. This requires a collaborative learning platform for…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) aim to "educate the world." More often than not, however, MOOCs fall short of this goal--a majority of learners are already highly educated (with a Bachelor's degree or more) and come from specific parts of the (developed) world. Learners from developing countries without a higher degree are…

In 2015, 35 million learners participated online in 4,200 MOOCs organized by over 500 universities. Learning designers orchestrate MOOC content to engage learners at scale and retain interest by carefully mixing videos, lectures, readings, quizzes, and discussions. Universally, far fewer people actually participate in MOOCs than originally sign up…

Synchronous collaboration with large groups in a classroom requires coordination and communication mechanisms that allow students to contribute towards achieving a common goal. This paper presents an application based on an Interpersonal Computer with a shared display that promotes synchronous, non-verbal (silent) collaboration with large groups…

Debates have been used to develop critical thinking within teaching environments. Many learning activities are configured as working groups, which use debates to make decisions. Nevertheless, in a classroom debate, only a few students can participate; large work groups are similarly limited. Whilst the use of web tools would appear to offer a…