INCORPORATING DIGITAL TOOLS FOR INFORMAL PEER GROUP LEARNING

Kenneth Thilakarathna, Chamath Keppitiyagama, Kasun De Zoysa, Henrik Hansson

2010

Abstract

Peer group learning is being introduced in many educational systems as an effective way of developing social and cognitive aspects. We observed that there is a spontaneous informal peer group activity among university students which takes place mostly at outdoor locations. Since it is difficult to acquire conventional mediation tools and artifacts at an outdoor location, conducting group learning activities in such resource constrained environments is tedious. Nowadays, most students carry wireless connectivity enabled laptop computers which can successfully be used as a mediation artifact. Our objectives in this research is to develop an appropriate framework to help and motivate students to conduct peer group learning activities using their laptop computers. In this paper we provide a comparative study of existing potential collaborative and cooperative peer group learning tools, describe their features and emphasize the need for a specifically developed tool for informal peer group learning that can incorporate these features.

References

  1. (2008). Adobe acrobat connect pro. http://www.adobe.com/ products/acrobatconnectpro/.
  2. (2009a). Crossloop. http://www.crossloop.com/.
  3. (2009b). Glance. http://www.glance.net.
  4. (2009c). Lotus sametime unyte. https://www.unyte.net/.
  5. (2009d). Microsoft sharedview. http://connect.microsoft. com/site94.
  6. (2009e). Netsupport school classroom management. http://www.netsupportschool. com/.
  7. (2009f). Open meetings. http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/.
  8. (2009g). Showmypc. http://showmypc.com/.
  9. (2009h). Tightvnc. http://www.tightvnc.com/.
  10. (2009i). Vnc easy broadcast. http://code.google.com/p/vnceasy-broadcast/.
  11. (2009j). Webex online meetings. http://www.webex.com.
  12. (2009k). Yuuguu. http://www.yuuguu.com/home.
  13. Bonk, C. J. and Cunningham, D. J. (1998). Searching for learner-centered, constructivist, and sociocultural components of collaborative educational learning tools. In In C. J. Bonk & K. S. King (Eds.), Electronic, pages 25-50. Erlbaum.
  14. Brian, K. B., Fisher, B. D., Jui, C., Lin, R., and Argue, R. (2002). The ”mighty mouse” multi-screen collaboration tool. In In Proceedings of UIST 2002, pages 209-212. ACM Press.
  15. Buszko, D. (2001). Decentralized ad-hoc groupware API and framework for mobile collaboration. In Proceedings of ACM 2001 International Conference on Supporting Group Work, pages 5-14.
  16. Gulek, j. and Demirtas, H. (2005). Learning with technology: the impact of laptop use on student achievement. The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment, 3(2):4-38.
  17. Kozulin, A., Gindis, B., Ageyev, V. S., and Miller, S. M. (2003). Vygotsky's Educational Theory in Cultural Context (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives). Cambridge University Press.
  18. Palincsar, A. S. (1986). The role of dialogue in providing scaffolded instruction. Educational Psychologist, 21(1 & 2):73-98.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Thilakarathna K., Keppitiyagama C., De Zoysa K. and Hansson H. (2010). INCORPORATING DIGITAL TOOLS FOR INFORMAL PEER GROUP LEARNING . In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-674-023-8, pages 450-453. DOI: 10.5220/0002798904500453


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu10,
author={Kenneth Thilakarathna and Chamath Keppitiyagama and Kasun De Zoysa and Henrik Hansson},
title={INCORPORATING DIGITAL TOOLS FOR INFORMAL PEER GROUP LEARNING},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2010},
pages={450-453},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002798904500453},
isbn={978-989-674-023-8},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - INCORPORATING DIGITAL TOOLS FOR INFORMAL PEER GROUP LEARNING
SN - 978-989-674-023-8
AU - Thilakarathna K.
AU - Keppitiyagama C.
AU - De Zoysa K.
AU - Hansson H.
PY - 2010
SP - 450
EP - 453
DO - 10.5220/0002798904500453