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Article of Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2019

Supporting classroom orchestration with real-time feedback: A role for teacher dashboards and real-time agents

Authors: Mike Tissenbaum, Jim Slotta

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of the physical classroom environment, coupled with a technology environment that includes real-time agents and data analytics, to support the orchestration of complex collaborative inquiry designs in a high school physics classroom. This design-based research contributes to the wider domain of scripting and orchestration (e.g., Dillenbourg 2012; Dimitriadis 2012; Fischer et al. 2013). Guided by a theoretical perspective of learning in knowledge communities (Slotta et al., 2018), we partnered with a physics teacher to co-design curricular activities and assessments that engaged students in collectively solving, tagging and evaluating physics problems, creating a knowledge base of student-contributed examples, and using those examples as a resource in collaborative inquiry challenges. To support the teacher in orchestrating such a complex curricular design, we developed a tablet application that allowed the teacher see the state of the class in real-time, control the flow of activities and helped him know when and where he was needed within the flow of class activities. The tablet leveraged a set of specially designed real-time software agents to process student interactions in real time, allowing dynamic orchestration of student groups, material allocation, and teacher notifications. The paper begins with a review of recent literature on scripting and orchestration, drawing connection to the theoretical perspective of knowledge communities. We then describe our theoretical model, the design-based method, and details of our curriculum and technology environment. The paper concludes with a summary of how the teacher tablet and the real-time software agents helped support the teacher’s real-time facilitation and orchestration.

Keywords: Learning, Collaboration, Orchestration, Teacher dashboards

Citation: Tissenbaum, M., Slotta, J. (2019) Supporting classroom orchestration with real-time feedback: A role for teacher dashboards and real-time agents. ijcscl 14 (3), pp. 325-351

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-019-09306-1

Preprint: tissenbaum_slotta_14_3.pdf

About this article at link.springer.com [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11412-019-09306-1] including a link to the official electronic version.