A WWW-based cooperative learning system and its effects on students' achievement

Today, there is growing interest in the use of Internet and WWW to achieve cooperative type activities and in particular, cooperative learning, based on the principles of constructivism. Cooperation can undoubtedly enhance network-mediated instructional systems but efficacious cooperative learning can be ensured providing these systems with components that reproduce well-established pedagogical models of cooperative learning, together with components that can assess both individual and group progress. This is made possible by introducing AI techniques in computer-aided learning systems that allow pedagogical strategies to be embedded. In this work, the authors present a system on the WWW for cooperative learning about geometric figures, where each student communicates with the rest of the group online, and a study to evaluate the cooperative learning effectiveness of our project called Geometriamo. The system is based on Slavin's Student Team Learning model for cooperative learning.