The year 2020 will be remembered as the year of COVID-19 and its subsequent lockdowns. The time to return to face-to-face teaching has arrived, but the shadow of the disease still hangs over teachers, students, and society. Disruption in teaching can still occur for students, or even teachers, if they are either diagnosed as COVID-19 positive or…

This paper presents a quantitative approach to multimodal discourse analysis for analyzing online collaborative learning. The coding framework draws together the fields of systemic functional linguistics and Activity Theory to analyze interactions between collaborative-, content- and technology-related discourse. The approach is used to examine…

CSCL systems which follow the dual-interaction spaces paradigm support the synchronous construction and discussion of shared artifacts by distributed or colocated small groups of learners. The most recent generic dual-interaction space environments, either model based or component based, can be deeply customized by teachers for supporting…

"Paper Scribbles" (PS) consisting of markers, vanguard sheets and 3M "Post-It" notes, is a pedagogical tool to harness collective intelligence of groups for collaborative learning in the classroom. Borrowing the key features of PS and yet avoiding some of their physical limitations, a computer-based tool called "Group…

The pervasive popularity of the Internet in the past decade has changed the way many students live and learn, in part, because modern technology has made it possible for learners to access Real-Time Multimedia information on the Internet, or research any topic of interest to them from virtually any computer anywhere in the world. Students can also…

Background: The literature on immersive virtual worlds and e-learning to date largely indicates that technology has led the pedagogy. Although rationales for implementing e-learning have included flexibility of provision and supporting diversity, none of these recommendations has helped to provide strong pedagogical location. Furthermore, there is…

This document gives an overview of current needs expressed so far in the project for multimedia management and real-time communication services between groups of learners/workers and examine the kind of support that a standard-based technical solution "off-the-shelf" can help in solving main technical issues and in focusing on…