Chat tools are an integral part of many collaborative e-learning environments. However, standard chat tools suffer from important coordination and coherence deficiencies. The solution proposed in this paper is a generic framework for building malleable structured chat applications. The paper discusses the approach and the main design decisions, emphasizing the importance of dynamic malleability...

techplay.mobi is a research project aimed at building a platform for developing mobile serious games. The novelty is to support the design of games that consider affective features during the game interaction, provide personalized responses according to users’ interactions, comply with accessibility requirements and focus on improving psycho-educational competences and on promoting critical thi...

This special session features scientists and developers building innovative interactive virtual environments that can be used for science education from kindergarten through college. The four projects presented in this session focus on different areas of science, from space physics to entomology, but they share a common educational orientation towards participatory learning using Internet acces...

Late in the summer term of 1999, the staff and pupils of Annandale Primary, a mainstream primary school of 240 pupils, were informed of a proposal to move them into a brand-new building on the Greenwich peninsula. The school has a very mixed socio-economic intake, with a catchment area encompassing both private and social housing; 35 per cent of the pupils have free school meals, 25 per cent ha...

The paper presents an a ordable and comprehensive robotic model of critical aid to any engineering school involved in teaching robotics. We present the stages of designing a three-link robot manipulator prototype that was built as part of a research project for establishing a prototyping environment for robot manipulators. Building this robot helped determine the required subsystems and interfa...

International evidence suggests that educational reform’s progress depends on teachers’ individual and collective capacity and its link with schoolwide capacity for promoting pupils’ learning. Building capacity is therefore critical. Capacity is a complex blend of motivation, skill, positive learning, organisational conditions and culture, and infrastructure of support. Put together, it gives i...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how different levels of participation, tutorship styles, and metacognitive reflection in an online course can influence the group’s knowledge building. 131 undergraduate students in Psychology and 59 students in the Educational Sciences and Primary Education Sciences participated in the study. Results show that a central level of participation is associat...

The study of collaborative knowledge building processes in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) environments is an important research topic in the field of Education and the Learning Sciences. In the last five years, the emergence of new technologies and especially their introduction and implementation in educational practices has brought along new challenges to the study of such processes. In th...

An urgent need to broaden diversity and support the preparation of students and faculty members along proactive pathways to research and success can be facilitated by targeted faculty development and formalization of policies built on institutional commitment, engagement, and accountability. Involvement of the faculty in building institutional diversity will recognize equity-building initiative...

In this paper we will present the stages of designing and building a three-link robot manipulator prototype that was built as part of a research project for establishing a prototyping environment for robot manipulators. Building this robot enabled us determine the required subsystems and interfaces to build the prototyping environment, and provided hands-on experience for the real problems and ...