A Framework to Support Monitoring and Moderation of e-Discussions with Heterogeneous Discussion Tools

This paper presents an integration architecture and a technical framework for moderation of e-discussions, a specific type of scenario for collaborative learning. The approach for monitoring and moderating discussions is supported at a generic level and defines interfaces to integrate diverse discussion environments smoothly into the generic framework. The usage of the developed monitoring and moderation system has been tested practically with two different stand-alone discussion environments and first empirical results of the moderation approach have been collected. We conclude with future work on the framework system and additional discussion tools to be integrated into the architecture.