COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN SCHOOLS - A DISTRIBUTED APPROACH

This paper briefly surveys current work in the emerging area of Comput er Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and describes how the techn ology can be extended to exploit communication between computers. A nu mber of applications which might make use of network support, distribu ted CSCL, are reviewed and a simple prototype distributed CSCL applica tion is described and evaluated. The work has highlighted issues conce rning the value, viability and development of distributed CSCL softwar e. It would appear that valuable opportunities for the development of such software exist but it is unclear how these applications might be developed using existing hardware. Conclusions are presented regarding the future of network supported CSCL.