Developing an Information System for Monitoring Student's Activity in Online Collaborative Learning

摘要

In this paper we address the issue of monitoringstudents¿ and groups¿ activity in online collaborative learningenvironments. This issue is especially important in thecollaborative e-learning context, since an efficient monitoringprocess can provide valuable information to online instructorswho may guide and support the development of collaborativelearning projects. We have developed and tested an informationsystem model which facilitates the automatic generation ofweekly monitoring reports derived from data contained in serverlog files. These reports provide online instructors with visualinformation regarding students¿ and groups¿ activity, thusallowing for a quick and easy classification of students andgroups according to their activity level. Therefore, entities with alow activity level are identified as soon as possible and just-intimeassistance can be established for them. Furthermore,instructors can use these monitoring reports to forecast potentialproblems ¿such as students¿ dropouts or possible conflicts insidethe groups due to unbalanced distribution of tasks¿ and takeoperational and tactical decisions oriented to avoid them.