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A METHOD FOR EVALUATING COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING PROCESSES

César A. Collazos, Luis A. Guerrero, José A. Pino and Sergio F. Ochoa
Department of Computer Science
Universidad de Chile
Blanco Encalada 2120,Casilla 2777, Santiago, Chile
{ccollazo, luguerre, jpino, sochoa}@dcc.uchile.cl


Abstract: Understanding and analyzing collaborative learning processes requires a fine- grained sequential analysis of the group interaction in the context of learning goals. Several researchers in the area of cooperative work take the quality of the group outcome as a success criterion. Nevertheless, recent findings are giving importance to the quality of the cooperation process itself. This paper presents a set of indicators the main objective of which is to evaluate the collaborative learning process. In this paper our aim is to present a method, which can be used in analyzing the interaction processes in a CSCL environment. We have defined an experiment to gather data from groups working on a simple task. These data are then used to build some cooperation indicators, which in turn allow us to estimate the quality of the work process.

Keywords: CSCL, CSCL process evaluation, indicators of collaboration.