July 2007 Volume 10 Number 3 - Educational Technology & Society

een used to evaluate the collaboration process for students using those tools. Finally, we discuss the benefits of the
proposed approach, draw conclusions and identify opportunities for further work.
Stages of the collaborative learning process
Our interest is in designed collaborative learning processes, i.e. those processes that are designed by a facilitator in
order to provide an environment for collaborative learning, rather than processes in which collaborative learning
might occur spontaneously. Such a collaborative learning process is typically composed of several tasks that are
developed by the cognitive mediator or facilitator and other tasks that are completed by the group of learners.
We divide the collaborative learning process into three phases according to its temporal execution: pre-process, inprocess
and post-process. Pre-process tasks are mainly coordination and strategy definition activities and postprocess
tasks are mainly work evaluation activities. Both the pre-process and post-process phases are typically
accomplished entirely by the facilitator. On the other hand, the tasks accomplished during the in-process phase will
be performed mainly by the learners (group members). This is where the interactions of the collaborative learning
process take place. Our main goal is in evaluating this stage.
Drawing on Johnson & Johnson (Adams et al., 1996; Johnson et al., 1995), we can identify the tasks involved in the
in-process stage of a collaborative learning process. Tasks completed by the learners are: application of strategies
such as positive interdependence toward achievement of the goal, intra-group cooperation, reviewing success criteria
for completion of the activity, monitoring, providing help and reporting. There are three facilitator tasks: providing
help, intervention in case of problems and providing feedback.
Collaborative learning process indicators
Guerrero et al. (2000) developed an Index of Collaboration, measured as the simple average of scores on indicators
that measured the learner tasks identified by Johnson & Johnson (Adams et al., 1996; Johnson et al., 1995). In this
paper, we will develop a refinement of that Index of Collaboration. Four indicators will measure the following
activities: use of strategies, intra-group cooperation, reviewing success criteria and monitoring. A fifth indicator is
based on the performance of the group. All these indicators can be measured directly from data collected by the
system as students participate in CSCL activities. In addition to these system-based measures of the collaborative
learning process, we propose some additional measures of students’ learning to collaborate based on participants’
responses to the process.
Before we describe the indicators in detail, it is necessary to describe the collaborative environments from which
metrics for estimation of the system-based indicators were gathered. In the next section, we therefore describe some
software tools which we have developed to study the in-process stage of the collaborative learning process.
Software tools
We developed software tools to analyze the quality of the collaboration process for small groups working
synchronously toward each of the two learning goals identified in the introduction to this paper: learning to
collaborate and collaborating to learn. Four tools were used to study learning to collaborate and two tools were used
to study collaborating to learn. Each of the tools is described in turn.
Chase the Cheese
For the first tool, we chose a small case in which a group of persons have to do some learning in order to complete a
joint task. The task is a game of the labyrinth type.
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