Group awareness widgets for enhancing social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: design and implementation

Our research on enhancing and fostering social interaction in asynchronous distributed learning groups (DLGs) utilizing computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments, centers on the sociability of these environments, i.e. the extent to which the CSCL environment is able to facilitate the emergence of a social space characterized by social relationships, trust and belonging, and group cohesion. A sound social space indicates the establishment of a learning community and enables the desired social interaction-vital in collaborative learning to take place. We present here a theoretical framework for fostering social interaction in both the educational and the social (psychological) dimension, although we are emphasizing the latter dimension. This framework is based on the ecological approach to social interaction which sees social affordances as the main determinant for enhancing the sociability of CSCL environments. We operationalize these social affordances through group awareness widgets (GAWs)-software tools which provide a learner with an awareness of other learners and which also enables him/her to initiate a communication episode with them. This paper describes the architecture of the CSCL environment and how GAWS can be integrated in this environment. Because we neither have the time nor the programming capacity for programming a CSCL environment by ourselves, we have selected three open source applications to construct the CSCL environment: MITRE's Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW), Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice, and the Scalable Internet Event Notification Architecture (SIENA). We also use the Electronic Course Book (ECB) that is developed at the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL).