Interactions of groups of students working with a variety of educational software are analyzed to develop an account of the structure of collaborative educational activities supported by directive software. Argues that the structure of educational activities around directive software can allow for the possibility of embedding exploratory…

Presents a framework for integrating pedagogy and software design and evaluates the framework by designing two educational programs to be used in coaching exploratory talk in small group work in citizenship and science. Results show that combining software design with off-computer coaching of exploratory talk enhances computer interaction and that…