Fabrice Hong is currently working in a visualization for ConceptGrid, one of the first CSCL script available on the ManyScript platform developed at CRAFT. In ConceptGrid, the students participate in an integrated learning activity pivoting on different social planes: an individual plane, a group plane and a class plane. Here is a nice summary of the theories behind.

Fabrice added some spice to the mix, offering a nice ‘spy tool’ for the teacher to look insight the group’s work. We tested the tool in the CSCW course I am TA’ing with 9 groups of 3-4 students. Each group had to read a couple of papers and then give a definition for 9 concepts. During the group phase, these concepts should be arranged in a 4×4 matrix. Whenever two confining cells of this matrix contained definitions then the students had also to assign a meaning to the relation between them.

Fabrice constructed then a 9×9 matrix where a cell is black whenever a definition for two concepts in that position were assigned a defined relation. He also added a cumulative view of the 9 grids.

Tags: collaboration tools, Computer Supported Collaborative Work, information metric, information visualization, research