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Article of Volume 6, Issue 4, December 2011

Collaboration within large groups in the classroom

Authors: Miguel Nussbaum, Eyal Szewkis, Tal Rosen, Jose Abalos, Fernanda Denardin, Daniela Caballero, Arturo Tagle, Christian Alcoholado

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to show how a large group of students can work collaboratively in a synchronous way within the classroom using the cheapest possible technological support. Making use of the features of Single Display Groupware and of Multiple Mice we propose a computer-supported collaborative learning approach for big groups within the classroom. The approach uses a multiple classification matrix and our application was built for language-learning (in this case Spanish). The basic collaboration mechanism that the approach is based upon is “silent collaboration,” in which students—through suggestions and exchanges—must compare their ideas to those of their classmates. An exploratory experimental study was performed along with a quantitative and qualitative study that analyzed ease of use of the software, described how the conditions for collaborative learning were achieved, evaluated the achievements in learning under the defined language objectives, and analyzed the impact of silent and spoken collaboration. Our initial findings are that silent collaboration proved to be an effective mechanism to achieve learning in large groups in the classroom.

Keywords: Collaborative learning in the classroom, Silent collaboration, Spoken collaboration, Multiple mice, Single display groupware, Multiple classification matrix

Citation: Nussbaum, M., Szewkis, E., Rosen, T., Abalos, J., Denardin, F., Caballero, D., Tagle, A., & Alcoholado, C. (2011) Collaboration within large groups in the classroom. ijcscl 6 (4), pp. 561-575

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-011-9123-y

Preprint: Acrobat-PDF nussbaum_szewkis_rosen_abalos_et-al_6_4.pdf

About this article at link.springer.com [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11412-011-9123-y] including a link to the official electronic version.