Technology-enhanced collaborative inquiry learning has gained a firm position in curricula across disciplines and educational settings and has become particularly pervasive in science classrooms. However, understanding of the teacher's role in this context is limited. This study addresses the real-time shifts in focus and distribution of teachers'…

This paper reports on a study of teacher support in experimental computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) settings where students engage with graphs in real-time labs within the context of school science. Real-time labs are digital devices and software connected to student-controlled sensors or probes that can measure and visualize data…

In this article we analyze how the joint cognitive system of teacher and student actions mediated by cultural tools develops sense making of science concepts, and the use of concepts as tools for explaining phenomena and processes related to energy and energy transformation. We take a sociocultural approach to the analysis of how material and…

Teachers and students face many challenges in shifting from traditional classroom cultures to enacting the "Knowledge-Building Communities" model (KBC model) supported by the CSCL environment, "Knowledge Forum" (Bereiter, 2002; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Scardamalia, 2002; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Enacting the…

This paper reports on a study of students' conceptual sensemaking with science diagrams within a computer-based learning environment aimed at supporting collaborative learning. Through the microanalysis of students' interactions in a project about energy and heat transfer, we demonstrate "how" representations become productive social and cognitive…

Tangible technologies and shared interfaces create new paradigms for mediating collaboration through dynamic, synchronous environments, where action is as important as speech for participating and contributing to the activity. However, interaction with shared interfaces has been shown to be inherently susceptible to peer interference, potentially…

Earlier quantitative studies in computer-supported collaborative learning identified "Productive Failure" (Kapur, Cognition and Instruction 26(3):379-424, "2008") as a phenomenon in which students experiencing relative failures in their initial problem-solving efforts subsequently performed better than others who were in a condition not involving…

Although learning science in informal non-school environments has shown great promise in terms of increasing interest and engagement, few studies have systematically investigated and produced evidence of improved conceptual knowledge and cognitive skills. Furthermore, little is known about how digital technologies that are increasingly being used…

This case study reports on how students, working collaboratively, interpret and construct a written report of the events described in animated educational software. The analysis is based on video recordings of two upper-secondary-school students while they are endeavouring to construe an animated sequence of the mouldering process. How the…

Why has technology become prevalent in science education without fundamentally improving test scores or student attitudes? We claim that the core of the problem is "how" technology is being used. Technologies such as simulations are currently not used to their full potential. For instance, physiology simulations often follow textbooks by…

Changing practices in schools is a very complex endeavor. This paper is about new practices we prompted to foster collaboration and critical reasoning in science classrooms: the presentation of pictures representing different perspectives, small group synchronous argumentation, and moderation of synchronous argumentation. A CSCL tool helped in…

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have been widely introduced to English primary schools (5-11 years) in the last decade and this has generated much research interest. In the past, research has focused on IWB-use in teacher-led sessions, attending particularly to the nature of teacher-pupil interaction at the IWB and the apparent motivational…

In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory study into the relationship between student self-efficacy and guidance use in a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) science curriculum project. We describe findings from a sample of middle school science students on the combined impact on learning of student self-efficacy in scientific…

Conversational technologies such as email, chat rooms, and blogs have made the transition from novel communication technologies to powerful tools for learning. Currently virtual worlds are undergoing the same transition. We argue that the next wave of innovation is at the level of the computer interface, and that mixed-reality environments offer…

The authors develop a framework for the design of tools to mediate collaboration intended to lead to learning. We identify two categories of media that are common in computer-supported collaborative learning and software in general: communication media and information media. These two types of media are then mapped onto two types of social…