Groupware goes to school:adapting BSCW to theclassroom

Gerry StahlDrexel University, College of Information Science and Technology,3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USAE-mail: Gerry.Stahl@drexel.edu

Abstract: Groupware for cooperative work (CSCW) and for collaborative learning (CSCL)have many important commonalities as well as dierent requirements. By transforming ageneric CSCW platform into an environment to support a particular vision of education ascollaborative knowledge building, we discovered how functionality had to be adopted,transformed and re®ned to meet the speci®c educational social setting. By `takinggroupware to school', we learned how to extend the original system into a CSCLapplication that could facilitate collaborative learning, knowledge building, perspectiveintertwining, knowledge negotiation, portfolio sharing and knowledge artifact productionin active, structured virtual learning places. In this paper, we describe the resulting systemand re¯ect on issues of design and implementation that dierentiate our CSCL approachfrom its closely related CSCW basis.

Keywords: collaborative knowledge building, CSCL, educational groupware, knowledgenegotiation.

Reference to this article should be made as follows: Stahl, G. (2004) `Groupware goes toschool: adapting BSCW to the classroom', Int. J. of Computer Applications in Technology,Vol. 19, Nos. 3/4, pp. 162±174.

1 INTRODUCTION: FROM CSCW TO CSCL

With widespread use of the Internet, groupwarepromises to provide the kind of support to networkedgroups that individual productivity software like wordprocessors and spreadsheets grant individuals. Thepotential of computer support for groups is perhapseven higher than that for individuals because commu-nication within groups has, until now, suered fromsevere constraints that may be eased by computersupport. The question must still be addressed as towhat groupware should aim at beyond the reproductionof pre-computer forms of group interaction.

We need a vision of how networked computers canfacilitate the discussion of all with all that does notrequire the coordination of a manager or teacher andcan support the collaborative building of knowledgethat is not restricted to the skills, memories and eortsof individuals. Perhaps when we take groupware intothe schools in a principled and explorative way we maysee how computer support can be designed to transformteacher-centric learning into collaborative learning and

transcend knowledge management with knowledgebuilding. In this way, what we learn about computersupport for collaborative learning (CSCL) could providean informative model for design of computer supportfor cooperative work (CSCW).

Academically, the exploration of groupware hashistorically been split into two separate domains: CSCWand CSCL, which address issues of work and learning,respectively. Each domain has its own conferences,journals and adherents. The CRIWG internationalworkshop on groupware (where an earlier version ofthis paper was presented in September 2002) is one ofthe few places that these two ®elds come together. Thisdistinction has not been based on a conceptual analysisthat might motivate and justify such a division.Certainly, the two domains have at least sucientcommonalities that they can borrow extensively fromone another.

Why should CSCW and CSCL be distinguished?There is at least a super®cial rationale for this. CSCW isconcerned with the world of work, where people mustaccomplish commercially productive tasks, while CSCLis concerned with the world of schooling, where students

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, Volume 19, Nos. 3/4, 2004162

Copyright # 2004 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

must learn basic skills that will in the end allow them tofunction eectively in the world of work and in adultsociety generally. These are very dierent socialcontexts. Perhaps the clearest lesson of CSCW researchto date has been the importance of taking into accountthe social contextÐ the motivations, prevailing prac-tices, political constraintsÐ in which software is to beused [1, 2]. By this criterion, the two domains are indeeddistinct and should be treated so.

However, it is also true that in today's `knowledgesociety' work is often knowledge work that requiresconstant learning [3, 4]. In the interesting cases, workÐwhether individual or cooperativeÐ is not the repetitivecarrying out of well-known tasks that were learned onceand for all in school, but work itself centrally involvesvarious learning tasks. Work may require just-in-timelearning, where existing information must be found tosolve a current problem. Or it may involve inquirylearning, where solving a wicked, ill-structured or non-routine problem requires the building of new knowl-edge. Similarly, the learning that is needed to preparestudents for an eective role in tomorrow`s knowledgesociety cannot consist merely in the transfer of existingknowledge into passively receptiveminds, but mustguide the students to develop personal and social skillsthat will allow them to ®nd information relevant tounanticipated problems and to engage in inquiryprocesses. In this sense, the application domains ofCSCW and CSCL are closely related; it is not just amatter of both having to support activities of groups.

This paper reports on the results of trying to extend abasic CSCW system for a typical CSCL application. Westarted with BSCW, a well-known and widely usedgroupware system [5±7]. Used by over 200,000 peoplesince 1995 when it was developed at the Institute forApplied Information TechnologyÐFIT (previously aGMD Institute, now a Fraunhofer Institute near Bonn,Germany), BSCW provides a system of autonomouslymanaged Web-based workspaces that can be used bymembers of a workgroup to organize and coordinate theirwork. These workspaces are central access points forshared documents, including folders for organizing themand a wealth of functionality for knowledge management.

Although BSCW has been used in many classrooms,especially at universities in Europe, it is clearly a CSCWapplication: It provides generic support for work groupsto share documents in an organized and accessible way.We wanted to adapt it speci®cally for the social settingof schools to see what it would mean to transform it intoa CSCL application. We undertook this within aEuropean Union project named ITCOLE (InnovativeTechnology for Collaborative Learning and KnowledgeBuilding) [8]. With its emphasis on collaborative knowl-edge building, this project aims primarily at supportinggroup discourse. It diers from many other onlineeducational approaches, that strive to convey informa-tion in the form of curriculum content or videotapedlectures, which can perhaps be done with a CSCW

system. In ITCOLE, we assume that students can ®ndinformation on the Internet or in documents uploadedinto the system, and that what need CSCL support aresuch activities as:

* the collaborative re¯ection on this information(sharing and annotating),

* the building of group knowledge (discussion fromperspectives) and

* the determination of what is to count as producedknowledge artifacts (knowledge negotiation).

The focus of the ITCOLE Project diers from that ofBSCW, which is on the archiving and sharing of existingknowledge artifacts. Thus, while we wanted to takeadvantage of important forms of CSCW support likeknowledge sharing and social awareness, we also wantedto go beyond the management of established knowledgeto the creation of knowledge that is innovative within alearning community that develops, de®nes, sanctionsand shares its knowledge.

This paper reports on how we designed a CSCLsystem by transforming a CSCW system. It begins witha scenario (Section 2), illustrating the vision of how ournew system, called `Synergeia', might be used tofacilitate collaborative knowledge building in a typicalcollaborative classroom. The system is named `Syner-geia' in recognition that the whole can be much morethan the sum of its parts. Thus, the system strives tosupport the synergistic construction of knowledge at thegroup level that is quite distinct from what any of thestudents could produce on their own. The scenarioanticipates the pedagogical concepts that are thenpresented in the next section (Section 3). For instance,the `folders' of BSCW are referred to as `virtual learningplaces' because the metaphor is no longer one of passivestorage containers, but of locations within which activeknowledge building takes place. The functionalityassociated with the pedagogical concepts is describedwith the respective concepts. Other Synergeia function-ality for students, teachers, administrators and research-ers is then summarized (Section 4). Following a briefdiscussion of the system infrastructure (Section 5),re¯ections on the attempt to adapt CSCW to CSCLare presented (Section 6).

The Synergeia groupware is already going to school.Teachers and students in Italy, Greece, the Netherlandsand Finland began in early 2002 to use an initial versionwithin the ITCOLE Project. An additional 50 class-rooms in these countries will use the revised versiondescribed in this paper during Fall 2002. The revisionsare based on early feedback from pedagogic researchers,teachers and students to the initial version, which wasitself based on extensive experience with related systemsin both CSCW and CSCL contexts.

Synergeia is designed to support collaborative knowl-edge building. However, it must also be ¯exible enoughthat teachers in various countries can use it for a broadspectrum of educational approaches. The following

163GROUPWARE GOES TO SCHOOL: ADAPTING BSCW TO THE CLASSROOM

scenario illustrates what might be called the `defaultusage' of Synergeia. This means that Synergeia wasdesigned to make it especially easy for teachers to setSynergeia up for structuring knowledge building thisway, although other ways of using it are also supported.

2 SCENARIO OF CSCL SUPPORT

Meet Carla, a student in a course on The Human Brain.Her teacher has enrolled her in the course and assigned

her to a workgroup on the role of Vision. When Carla®rst logs in, she can see a folder for her course on `TheHuman Brain'. In addition, there is a `personal knowl-edge building perspective' for her to jot down her ownideas (Figure 1).

Carla clicks on her course to view its contents. Shesees a folder for her project group within that coursecalled `The Vision Team'. She notices in the size columnthat there are already some items in the group learningplace, so she clicks on `Group: The Vision Team' andgoes there (see Figure 2). Carla works with the other

Figure 1 Carla's computer screen after she logs in. Her personal learning place includes access to thelearning places associated with her courses and to her private knowledge building area.

Figure 2 The Group learning place. Here is where collaboration takes place. Documents, websites and other formsof information are collected, shared, organized, analyzed and critiqued.

164 G. STAHL

students in her project team to collect websites and otherdocuments about how vision works as part of thehuman brain.

As they collect new information, the team membersdiscuss what they have found and begin to build theoriesabout vision in the group knowledge building perspec-tive (see Figure 3). This discussion motivates them to domore Web searches and to try to answer questions thatthey pose to each other. Gradually, they converge on anunderstanding of their topic and put together a portfolioof what they have learned, to share with the othermembers of the course.

As they begin to explore the physiology of vision,dierent students come upon dierent explanations.Some ®nd discussions of vision in terms of lightdynamics, lenses and the stimulation of the retinalsensors; others read about chemical reactions in thesensors and nerve connections; while others discoverpresentations involving electrical charges in neurons. Asthese dierent ®ndings come together in the groupknowledge building perspective, the concepts and claimsin the notes interact. Eorts to question one another andto synthesize multiple notes raise new questions,hypotheses and insights.

Carla is a shy girl who does not normally participatemuch in face-to-face class discussions. She is afraid thather ideas are not very good and she hesitates to sharethem until she has had time to think about them and tocompare them with other ideas or to check them out bycollecting more information. So when she sees aninteresting idea in the group learning place, she often

copies it into her personal perspective and works on itthere, where no one else will see it right away. Duringthe week, her personal area ®lls with the results of newweb searches, documents she has collected or edited,notes that she has copied from the group area, and ideasshe has jotted down in her own knowledge buildingarea. When she is happy with some of her ideas, shecopies them and related documents into the group areato see what her team mates will say about it. Now shehas some con®dence that her ideas are thought throughand can stand up to inspection by others. Even if hersuggestions are not adopted unchanged in the end, theywill be taken into the group discourse as seriouscontributions.

At some point in the collaborative knowledgebuilding process, Carla thinks that the group membershave something almost ready to present to the course asa `knowledge artifact' or part of their team `knowledgeportfolio'. So she puts this information together infolders named `Good documents/websites we foundabout vision' and makes a proposal to share this withthe course (Figure 4). Now the group area contains aproposal folder named `The Vision Team's proposal 1'(see Figure 3).

In addition to the folders with proposed content, theproposal folder contains a voting interface and aknowledge building area for discussing what changesare needed before the group members are ready to agreeto send this folder to the course learning place as their`knowledge portfolio'.

Once the team has decided to send their portfolio to

Figure 3 The group knowledge building area. This area provides an overview of the discussion within a groupand oers an interface for engaging in the knowledge building process.

165GROUPWARE GOES TO SCHOOL: ADAPTING BSCW TO THE CLASSROOM

the course learning area, it can be discussed by everyonein the course and evaluated by the teacher as a productof the group's knowledge building eort. This might bethe end of a curriculum unit, or it might lead to furtherinquiry and knowledge building. The same groups mightcontinue to work together or the teacher and studentsmight create new groups in new learning places. Ourscenario ends here, but the learning continues.

3 PEDAGOGICAL REQUIREMENTS FOR SYNERGEIA

The adaptation of BSCW for school classrooms involvesresponding to a particular pedagogical vision, andproviding support for the particulars of that vision. Tounderstand the dierence that the CSCL setting makesto system design, one must understand the pedagogicalconcepts that drive the adaptation. The central conceptsof collaborative knowledge building are presented in thecurrent section, along with a description of the supportimplemented for them in Synergeia.

Note that although Synergeia is most useful andpowerful if used to support what is here called`collaborative knowledge building', the system has beendesigned to be ¯exible so that teachers with dierentcurricular goals and pedagogical approaches can adjustit to their needs. The design process tried to incorporatethe following in¯uences:

* Adoption of pedagogical principles of collaborativeknowledge building and progressive inquiry.

* Incorporation of eective functionality from relatedCSCL and CSCW systems, both commercial andresearch.

* Adaptation to the social settings of constructivistEuropean classrooms.

* Support for social practices involved in collaborativelearning such as that described in the precedingscenario.

* Flexibility for teachers in dierent countries andpedagogical cultures to adapt the system to theirvarying approaches.

3.1 Collaborative knowledge building

The design of Synergeia is guided by an educationalapproach that stresses the construction of knowledgewithin a learning community, typically including stu-dents and more experienced teachers. The idea is thatnew knowledge will be created through the investiga-tions and discourse of the group. While there areimportant roles for individual student thinking as wellas for teacher guidance, there is also emphasis onsharing, critiquing and building upon each others' ideasto arrive at deeper knowledge of a topic within thecommunity [9, 10]. `Group learning' is to be understoodhere in an emphatic sense. It is the group that learns.

Figure 4 The proposal folder. This collects a number of documents or subfolders that are the content of the proposal, as well as a groupnegotiation perspective for discussing the proposal and debating possible changes to it. It also includes a voting interface displaying the

present status of the proposal (who has voted for it, voted against it, or not yet voted).

166 G. STAHL

Knowledge is constructed by the group itself. WhereasCSCW supports the sharing and archiving of knowledgethat is contributed by cooperating individuals, CSCLsupports the functioning of a collaborative group so asto build knowledge that is the shared creation andproperty of the group. Primarily, group knowledgearises in discourse and is preserved in linguistic artifacts,whose meaning is interpreted within group processes[11, 12].

Because knowledge building proceeds largely throughdiscussion, each personal, group and course perspectiveautomatically contains its own knowledge building areain Synergeia. These knowledge building areas haveextended the basic threaded discussion facility ofBSCW. While threaded discussion support is derivedfrom CSCW, it requires more nuanced and specializedsupport in CSCL. Notes from one perspective can nowbe copied to other virtual learning places in otherperspectives, and notes from elsewhere can be pastedhere. Notes in these areas are now included in systemsearches, because they form an important part of theknowledge in the system.

The user interface of the threaded discussion areas inSynergeia has been carefully designed to encouragethoughtful, focused, deep knowledge building. Belowthe current note is a display of all other notes entered inthe same knowledge building area. The notes can bedisplayed as indented threads, indicating which notesreply to which other notes. Alternatively, the notes canbe sorted by author, date or thinking type. Sorting byauthor shows quickly who is contributing the most; bydate shows the order in which ideas were written; bythinking type indicates which parts of the knowledgebuilding process have or have not been emphasized sofar. In each of the sorted displays, the display of thecontent of the notes can be toggled on and o so thatone can see either just the list of the notes or the fullcontent of the whole discussion. This is useful so thatone can quickly get an overview of the structure ofcomplex discussions or see (or print) the full content ofbrief discussions.

As seen in Figure 3, the note that is currently beingread is at the top of the screen. With it are a number ofbuttons for building further knowledge, such as addinga `Reply to this Note'. The background color of this partof the display corresponds to the note's thinking type.The dierent thinking types are described on a help pagereached with the `Thinking Type Descriptions' button;the corresponding background colors can be seen there.

3.2 Thinking types

Thinking types take on a much more important role inSynergeia than in BSCW, where they were limited andrarely used. It is important for students to re¯ect uponthe role that a note they are entering will play in theknowledge building process. Both note titles andcategories should be chosen carefully [13].

Discussion within the knowledge building areas isscaolded with a set of thinking type categories for thenotes. Before someone can enter a note, they have todecide what category of note they want to add to theexisting discussion. For instance, do they want to statethe problem that is to be pursued, propose a workingtheory, deepen the knowledge that is already there, ormake a meta-comment about the knowledge buildingprocess that is taking place? It is possible to havedierent sets of thinking types for dierent approachesto knowledge building. For instance, the precedingexamples illustrate categories of inquiry learning notes.Other categories are appropriate for brainstorming,debate, design rationale, etc.

A teacher or other user may select a thinking type setfor a given knowledge building area when that area isde®ned or when the ®rst note is written in that area. Thefollowing thinking type sets were de®ned for version 2 ofSynergeia:

Knowledge Building Debate Discussion

Starting Note Starting Note Starting NoteProblem Statement Position GreetingWorking Theory Argument CommentDeepening Knowledge Pro OpinionGeneral Comment Con LikeReflection on Process Evidence DislikeSummary Statement Question StoryRequest Clarify Question

Brainstorming Negotiation Scientific theory

Starting Theme Topic PhenomenonSuggestion Proposal HypothesisClarification Counter ExperimentProcess Guidance Agree ProposalDistinction Disagree AnalysisGeneralization Ask ArgumentExample Question EvidenceSummary Summary Theory

3.3 Virtual learning places

The most basic function that Synergeia oers is a set ofworkspaces on the Internet where people can shareideas, documents, web links and other objects. Whetherpeople using Synergeia are in the same room during thesame class period or they are in dierent countriesworking at dierent times, they can share their work andcollaborate within these virtual learning places. Teachersand students can create new places whenever they wantfor any special needs they have. Places can be created tostore new collections of documents. Synergeia oersseveral special kinds of learning places, such as Courses,Groups, Proposals and Knowledge Building areas thathave special features. Although these virtual learningplaces are based upon BSCW folders for storingdocuments where they can be accessed by other groupmembers, these places are structured to support speci®ccollaborative knowledge building activities like negotia-tion of group knowledge. The CSCW workspaces are

167GROUPWARE GOES TO SCHOOL: ADAPTING BSCW TO THE CLASSROOM

appropriated and specialized to support a variety ofspeci®c CSCL activities.

A major advantage of Synergeia over threadeddiscussion systems in commercial groupware systems isthat the discussions in Synergeia are separated intopersonal, group and course perspectives in dierentvirtual learning places, so that dierent topics are notmixed together and it is easier to keep up with relevantdiscussions without being overwhelmed by contribu-tions of many other people who are investigating otherissues. The same is true of the documents, web links,etc., that are collected in the various learning places.

It is important that the network of learning places bestructured in a way that seems natural to the studentsusing them. The basic structure of learning placesfollows the normal structure of schools, with studentsin projects within courses. It should be easy to see whatis available and relevant, and to navigate to it easily.Therefore, when a student logs in, that student'spersonal learning place is displayed; the personal placeincludes a list of the student's courses and the courselearning place includes the student's groups. It shouldalso be easy to copy documents and ideas from oneplace to another. At the same time, because these placesare generally shared, it is also important to protect thecontents so that one person cannot change or deletesomeone else's work arbitrarilyÐas can occur in BSCW.

By default, Synergeia de®nes appropriate connectionsbetween places and reasonable access rights to themwhen people are registered for courses and groups. Eachuser, group and course automatically has its ownknowledge building areaÐadditional areas can beadded or the automatic ones can be deleted. Also, plainplaces that do not have the special characteristics ofgroups and courses can easily be added. Thus, thestructures, navigation paths, access rights and facilitieswithin Synergeia are designed for usage within the socialpractices prevailing in school settings, with adequate¯exibility to allow for broad variations within thesesettings.

3.4 Perspectives

The approach to building knowledge in Synergeia isbased on the idea of intertwining personal and groupperspectives [14]. All knowledge involves interpretationfrom speci®c perspectives [15, 16]. In collaboration,personal interpretations of what is said in groupdiscourse interact to form shared understandings [11].

The default structure of Synergeia provides a networkof virtual learning places that are set up for personal,group and course uses. These perspectives support arange of pedagogical models that are favored in thedierent countries participating in the ITCOLE Project:

* Community of learners (Italy). The areas in whichwork, communication and learning take place arestructured to re¯ect the structure of the community,

with its sub-groups and members.* Progressive inquiry (Finland). The inquiry process

progresses through collaborative discourse withingroups as well as through re¯ection by individuals.

* Conceptual change (Greece). Learning is treated as asocial process in which the understanding of indivi-duals is aected by and grounded in the discourse ofthe community.

* Shared and individual regulation process (Nether-lands). The intertwining of shared group andpersonal individual ideas leads to new understandingsat all levels.

Thus, there are private personal learning places whereonly one person can add notes, documents or sub-folders and can come back and look at these, modifythem, or copy them to a group place. These are places todevelop your personal perspective on a topic withoutworrying what other people will think about what youare doing. Because your personal ideas and documentsare in Synergeia, they can be easily related to ideas inother learning places. Allowing the system for groupwork to be used for personal re¯ection as well has twomajor advantages. First, it encourages system use andfamiliarity. A major problem with groupware systemscan be that they require users to log in every day to seewhat is new there; if people do not use the system fortheir normal activities then they tend not to log infrequently enough. Also, if people have to use too manydierent systems for their work then it is dicult tobecome pro®cient in them all. Second, by conductingboth personal and group work in the same system,people can easily move ideas and documents back andforth between the two. In particular, Synergeia isdesigned to allow quick cut and paste of items and setsof items from any visible learning place to any other.

Then there are the group learning places where mostof the collaboration and knowledge building gets done.Here everything is shared with the other members of theteam or work group. Students who are not in the groupcannot modify or comment on work in the group untilthe group decides to share something with the wholecourse. Knowledge usually emerges from a groupperspective [12].

And there are also course learning places, where allthe smaller work groups or project teams within thecourse contribute the knowledge they have built up. Forinstance, a teacher who has a course with 30 studentsmight divide them into six or seven teams. Perhaps eachteam would develop a portfolio to present their ideas tothe course. Each team might have the same task or theymight divide up dierent aspects of the larger coursetopic. After they develop their group portfolios, theycan share and debate within the whole course perspec-tive. While CSCW systems provide support within ageneric group, a CSCL system should support variouslevels from individual to large group, with ¯uidnavigation and transfer of contents among the levels.

168 G. STAHL

3.5 Negotiating knowledge artifact portfolios

Sometimes it is pedagogically important for groups tonegotiate the promotion of knowledge from oneperspective to another, such as the decision to makeproducts of a group available to the larger course. Ateacher can set up course learning places so that the onlyway that new documents, maps and folders can beadded is by a group developing a knowledge portfolio orknowledge artifact in their group learning place and thendeciding to move this into the course place. Making thiskind of group decision is called knowledge negotiation inSynergeia. There is a negotiation mechanism to help agroup reach this decision and move the knowledge theyhave created into the course learning place, where it canbe shared and discussed by all members of the course.By specifying the negotiation option for a course, theteacher in eect declares that the only knowledgeallowed in this learning place is knowledge created bygroups.

In CSCW negotiation, such as Herrmann's or Wulf'smodel [11, 14, 17], commenting on one's voting servesthe purpose of expressing one's supposedly pre-existingopinion. By contrast, within Synergeia, engaging innegotiation of knowledge building is participating in agroup re¯ection on shared knowledge. This can be seenin the thinking types of the notes contributed. In CSCWthe note format stresses who the author is and maycharacterize the notes as a `pro' or `con' opinion (e.g., inBSCW); in Synergeia the note must ®rst of all bedetermined to be a particular aspect of the knowledgebuilding process, such as a problem statement, aworking theory or a summary statement. Knowledgenegotiation is thereby explicitly structured as a collab-orative group eort, where notes written by individualsmust ®t into the group process and are categorized bytheir function in the group thinking, not in individualopinions.

Negotiation in a knowledge building context isessentially dierent from that in a knowledge manage-ment or group decision situation [18]. In other group-ware settings, negotiation is conceived of as a straw voteto determine how people's pre-existing opinions aredistributed on alternative options that have beenproposed [17, 19, 20]. In a collaborative knowledgebuilding setting, however, it is a matter of furtherre®ning the proposed knowledge artifact. Voting servesjust to signify that the participants are generally satis®edthat the artifact represents their group knowledge, and itcan be shared at the course level as a knowledgeportfolio contributed by their group. The importantpart of the negotiation process is the evolution of theknowledge itself in parallel with the group discourseabout it.

When members of a group learning place have built aknowledge artifactÐ such as a collection of websites, aPowerPoint slide presentation, a concept map, or aportfolio of texts and picturesÐ they can decide to copy

it to their course learning place to share with membersof other groups in their course. This result of theircollaborative work as a group may be a ®nal productthat the teacher will evaluate or it may be anintermediate product that they want to share and getfeedback on from other people.

If a course has been de®ned to require negotiation,then students in that course must go through the formalnegotiation procedure to copy a proposed knowledgeartifact portfolio to the course learning place. Thepurpose of this is to ensure that all or most people in thegroup agree to have the proposed portfolio represent theknowledge that the group has built together. (Ifnegotiation is not required in the course, anyone cansimply copy an item from the group place into thecourse learning place.) To use the negotiation proce-dure, a student must select items for their portfolio andexecute the `Negotiate' command. This will create aportfolio proposal in the group place.

The portfolio proposal interface includes a votingarea that allows group members to vote on submittingthe portfolio when they are happy with it. Within theportfolio are:

* the selected portfolio knowledge artifacts, and* a negotiation knowledge building area for discussing

changes that should be made to the proposedportfolio.

Students use the negotiation knowledge building areato negotiate changes that they think should be madewithin the portfolio. They make changes in the portfoliothat they think will make it acceptable to all or mostpeople in their group. When they like the way theportfolio looks, they vote to approve it. Each personwho submits an approval or disapproval vote must entera statement justifying their vote; this statement isautomatically incorporated into the negotiation knowl-edge building area where it is included in the negotiationdiscourse and can be discussed. When all or most of thepeople in the group have voted for the portfolio, it isautomatically copied to the course learning place. Thenegotiation knowledge building area is copied with theportfolio folder so that members of the whole course cansee what the group said about the portfolio. Groupmembers may want to make summary comments in thisarea to say what they think is important in the portfolio.If they still have criticisms of the portfolio or if theywould like course members to discuss certain ideasabout it, they can put that in the area as well.

3.6 Concept maps, multi-modality and social awareness

In building knowledge, it is often useful for a group todiscuss how the concepts they are using are related toeach other. One method for doing that is for the groupto construct a concept map which diagrams theserelationships. Synergeia provides a whiteboard calledMapTool for people to work together simultaneously to

169GROUPWARE GOES TO SCHOOL: ADAPTING BSCW TO THE CLASSROOM

sketch a concept map. The whiteboard is accompaniedby a chat window to support coordination of this taskand interpretation of the symbols in the map.

Students and teachers can open the MapTool incourse and group learning places and in proposalportfolios. To work with other members of a proposedportfolio, work group or course, they go to the learningplace for that portfolio, group or course. At the top ofthe screen is a list of all members of the place. Thosewho are currently logged in to Synergeia have theirnames shown in bold; if they are active in MapTool,their name is in red. This is a form of social awarenesswhich has been added to BSCW; it lets people knowwho is involved in MapTool in this learning place.

Each proposed portfolio, group and course learningplace has its own version of MapTool. When aMapTool session is ®rst started, the last map for thatplace is automatically opened so that work on it can becontinued if desired. One can also reset the MapTool tostart with a blank whiteboard. When other membersjoin an active MapTool session, they see the currentstate of the whiteboard and the chat window, so theycan catch up on what has already been done in there.

At any time, the current state of the work inMapTool can be saved. Then a student can go intothe learning place and make a copy of this map. Thesaved map can be opened as a JPEG graphics ®le. Thestudent can save this ®le in a Word document, aPowerPoint slide show, a larger graphic ®le or simply asa JPEG ®le in a sub-folder. This way, collaborativework in MapTool can be documented as part of a reportor knowledge portfolio.

The MapTool module was included in Synergeia asan experiment in combining synchronous communica-tion (the whiteboard and the chat) with asynchronous(the knowledge building threaded discussion). BSCWdid not include any synchronous communication andmany learning support systems like CSILE are alsoexclusively asynchronous. While asynchronous is con-sidered a more thoughtful, re¯ective mode for knowl-edge building [21], synchronous communication can bemuch more time-ecient for intense interaction, such asbrainstorming or working out details of a drawingÐassuming that the participants can get together online atthe same time. Threaded discussion has its problems[22], and sometimes chat can overcome them. Workingout the interplay between MapTool and the BSCWdatabase was complicated (sending information betweenthe modules and storing MapTool sessions in thedatabase and in the asynchronous interface). However,it provides a good demonstration of how this can bedone successfully.

The social awareness implemented with MapTool isjust a ®rst step in what is possible. The need to meetsynchronously in MapTool made it important to knowwho else was currently online in one's group. A furtherfunction requested by early users but not yet imple-mented is the ability to invite speci®c people to

participate in a current or future MapTool sessionÐe.g., through an announcement highlighted in theSynergeia interface or with email.

In general, as the CSCL medium becomes richer, itbecomes more important to provide awareness aboutwho is doing what, what has been done in the systemand how to ®nd existing information. As users becomemore sophisticated, it is useful to provide dierentmodes of interaction that are appropriate and that aretuned to dierent undertakings. Synergeia takes just a®rst exploratory step in this direction.

3.7 Roles and personalization

Synergeia de®nes roles for students, teachers, guests,mentors, etc. This gives people in these roles the powerto execute certain menu functions, such as to read, editor delete objects in a learning place. When someone isinvited into or registered for a particular learning place(such as a course or group) they are invited or registeredas a member with a speci®c role (such as student). It ispossible to change a user's role, to de®ne new roles andto add new sub-folders where the user has a dierentrole. Whereas roles in BSCW were generic and rarelyused, in Synergeia they capture important distinctionsbetween people based on power and knowledge inschool settings. These roles must be adapted to dierentkinds of learning places.

For youthful users, it is important to make softwaremore fun to use. Personalization and customizationfacilities allow users to adapt the system to their ownpreferences and to feel that the systems is `theirs'.Synergeia users can personalize the user interface byincluding a picture of themselves in the upper left-handcorner of the screen next to their username. This picturewill represent them at other places in the Synergeiainterface as well, such as when knowledge building notesare sorted by author.

There are many functions for customizing theSynergeia interface. A student can:

* specify which columns to display for details related tosub-folders and documents.

* change the size of the displayed text.* sort the listed sub-folders and documents in dierent

orders.* toggle on and o the display of menu shortcut icons

below the main menu.* toggle the descriptions below the names of sub-

folders and documents.* toggle the contents below the titles of knowledge

building notes.

Students can set a variety of details about how theSynergeia system will work for them. They can:

* change their password.* set the location for their picture.

170 G. STAHL

* enter their email address or home page.* set their system preferences.

Students are automatically initially considered `begin-ners' as users of Synergeia. This means that the menusthey see are not full of options that are intended for moreexperienced users. They can change to `Advanced' or`Expert' status when they feel ready to access more menuitems. For younger students in primary school, a new`primary' pro®le has been de®ned; it makes the interfacesimpler by removing many menu items and shortcuts tomake student usage simpler.

4 ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITY IN SYNERGEIA

Section 3 described the pedagogical requirements forSynergeia that distinguish it from related work. Syner-geia is focused on the needs of small collaborativegroups of students, guided by teachers who structureand facilitate their interactions. By contrast, mostcommercial systems are oriented to administrativeconcerns such as delivering pre-de®ned content, trackingattendance and test results, handling homework assign-ments and conducting student evaluation. At best,systems like LearningSpace and WebCT provide basicCSCW functionality for sharing documents and com-municating. Because systems like Lotus Notes cater tocorporate and professional training applications, theyprovide generic discussion forums, without specializedthinking types or workgroup perspectives structured inresponse to classroom cultures. Alternative approacheslike Swiki [23] systems also lack the tailoring toclassroom needs due to the generality of their function-ality. At the other extreme are CSCL systems that aremore specialized for particular pedagogies, like theSTEP system to support problem-based learning [24].CISLE/KnowledgeForum [10] is very similar to Syner-geiaÐbecause its developers began the tradition inwhich the ITCOLE Project is ®rmly planted. Synergeiaalso incorporated features from FLE [25] and Web-Guide [14], research prototypes that led to its conceptionand prototyped much of the functionality incorporatedin it. Synergeia is unique in combining the features ofperspectives, multiple thinking type sets and negotiationwith threaded discussion to support collaborativeknowledge building. It also features a rare integrationof synchronous and asynchronous support.

In addition to the pedagogically motivated features,Synergeia provides a wealth of functions from BSCW.Some of these have been modi®ed or extended to allowstudents, teachers, administrators and researchers totake advantage of the core Synergeia functionality.

Student actions have been modi®ed to simplify theuploading of the user's picture; uploading, archiving andversioning of documents, images and websites is alreadywell supported by the inherited BSCW commands.Likewise, the ability to search the Web, review hits, rate

URLs and store shared bookmarks was already avail-able. Students can set up new virtual learning places andinvite friends to them, as well as starting new knowledgebuilding areas and initiating MapTool sessions. Socialawareness is well supported with BSCW's info, eventsand history systems. In addition, Synergeia addeddisplays of the names of course and group members,with indications of who is currently active in Synergeiaor MapTool.

Considerable support for teachers has been added.Teachers can register lists of students in the system andassign them to courses and workgroups easily. Studentsno longer have to have their own email addresses inorder to be registered. Teachers can de®ne course andgroup learning places, with a number of options fornegotiation and access; this gives teachers considerablecontrol in structuring the use of Synergeia. They can, ofcourse, seed a learning place with documents and aknowledge building area with starting questions fordiscussion. When a new knowledge building area iscreated, the teacher can select which set of thinking typecategories will be used: `knowledge building', `scienti®ctheory', `negotiation', `debate', `discussion' or `brain-storming'. Teachers can revise the parameters fornegotiation, such as the percentage needed for amajority vote. They can also over-ride the votingprocess to move proposals from group to courseplacesÐor even in the opposite direction.

Although Synergeia is currently run on a centralserver in Germany, it can be downloaded to local sites toovercome Internet delays in schools with slow connec-tions. The system administrator registers an initial set ofteachers and researchers to use Synergeia. The admini-strator can also translate all terminology in the inter-face, including the sets of thinking type categories, aswell as re-de®ne the actions associated with various userroles. The entire Synergeia interface has been translatedinto Italian, Greek, Dutch and Finnish from the Englishoriginal. Administrators can modify the translation ®les.Users select the language they wantÐby default itcorresponds to their browser language setting.

In addition, functionality has been added to assistresearchers who want to analyze the usage of Synergeia.There are now log ®les that track all actions in BSCL,the contents of all knowledge building areas and allactions in MapTool. The log ®les can be analyzed withspecial tools or copied into a spreadsheet. Knowledgebuilding areas can be printed out in various formats.

5 THE SYNERGEIA ARCHITECTURE

The present section brie¯y indicates how the technol-ogical infrastructure of BSCW was extended in responseto the needs of the classroom setting. Technically,Synergeia consists of the following three components:

* BSCW This is the Basic Support for Cooperative

171GROUPWARE GOES TO SCHOOL: ADAPTING BSCW TO THE CLASSROOM

Work system. It is a Web-based system designed tosupport teams of adult professionals working to-gether and sharing documents. It provides mechan-isms for uploading, downloading, versioning andarchiving of many kinds of documents. It alsosupports Web searches, annotations and ranking.BSCW is written in Python as an object-oriented setof cgi scripts. It includes a persistent store for objects.The server runs in Windows or Unix and the clientcan be displayed in any Web browser. Interestingly,the BSCW technology is literally a technology ofextensibility; the cgi scripts extend the functionalityof a core webserver like Apache or IIS by means ofstandard HTTP calls. This makes BSCW an attrac-tive basis for further, open-ended extensions.

* BSCL This is the set of functions and interfaces thatadapts the BSCW software to collaborative knowl-edge building in K-12 classrooms. It includes thefunctions to create personal, group and courselearning places and to register users in these withspeci®c roles. It also includes the knowledge buildinginterface, sets of thinking types and support fornegotiation. BSCL is implemented as a PythonPackage that extends BSCW and that interfaces withMapTool. Packages are a ¯exible technology formodular extensibility in object-oriented languageslike Python. BSCL is one of several packages thatextend BSCW and it is possible to create newpackages that extend BSCL itself.

* MapTool This is a collaborative whiteboard thatstudents in a group or course can work onsimultaneously (synchronously) to construct conceptmaps and other simple diagrams. It includes a chatwindow for coordinating and discussing the drawing.The maps are stored in BSCL learning places.Synchronous support for the MapTool Java appletclient is provided by the Ants system, using the Elvinserver. The inclusion of MapTool in the Synergeiasystem is an experiment in extending BSCW withsynchronous components, where user information,drawings and chat data must be stored in andretrieved from BSCL's database by MapTool.

6 WHAT GROUPWARE CAN LEARN BY GOING TO

SCHOOL

Much has already been learned about the dierencesand similarities of CSCW and CSCL groupware supportthrough the process of designing and implementingSynergeia. The school setting has special characteristicsthat make certain functionality particularly importantand that require speci®c transformations of otherfunctions. Many such adaptations and extensions havebeen illustrated in the preceding sections of this paper.

One unanticipated technical ®nding was the impor-tance of mechanisms for setting speci®c access rights forvarious kinds of folders. A new version of BSCW (4.0)

that was released during the beginning of the ITCOLEProject included mechanisms for de®ning roles. ThesemechanismsÐwhich to date have only been explored inthe development of SynergeiaÐproved particularlyhelpful. From an implementation standpoint, manyextensions to BSCW for Synergeia are largely accom-plished through the de®nition of special domain-speci®croles, with speci®c access rights within various kinds oflearning places.

A straightforward application of the role mechanismwas to de®ne roles for teachers, mentors, students,administrators and guests. New users are registered inSynergeia with one of these roles. The role determineswhat actions the user can undertake within his or herpersonal learning place. For instance, a user who isregistered as a teacher may create courses and groups orrede®ne negotiation parameters; a student user mayupload documents; and a guest may only view contentsin Synergeia. A teacher has special powers to deleteoensive materials, and so on. A mentor also has manyof these powers that students do not have, but does nothave the ability to create courses and groups. Users havemore control over objects that they created than overother objects, such as the ability to edit or delete them.A user can invite other users to folders and can reset ormodify roles, but can never assign abilities that exceedthat user's own existing abilities.

In addition to the standard roles, special roles werede®ned for `course mates' and `restricted students'.These are used for special circumstances. For instance,course mates can see in their course learning places whatgroups exist that they do not belong to. Depending onthe option set by the teacher when the group wasde®ned, users who had student roles are re-assigned`course mate' roles, where they are able to see the nameof the group listed, or else they are re-assigned the`restricted student' role, where they may enter the grouplearning place and view or copyÐbut not add to ormodifyÐ the content there.

Similarly, in a course where the negotiation optionwas selected, all student users are re-assigned the role of`restricted student'. This means that they can see andcopy all content, but cannot add or modify anything(except indirectly through the group negotiation proce-dure). This re-assigned role is inherited down into allsub-folders and sub-sub-folders, etc. (as is usual forroles). This automatically prevents students in a coursefrom changing the contents of negotiated portfoliosfrom groups, although they can view these contents andcopy them elsewhere to work further on them. In acourse knowledge building area, the `restricted student'roles are changed back to normal student roles, so thatstudents can participate in knowledge building discus-sions within the course perspective.

The school setting requires much more complexcontrol over access rights than is instituted in thenormal BSCW system. The role mechanism provides aconvenient, ¯exible and elegant means for de®ning and

172 G. STAHL

instituting the needed sets of access controls.This paper re¯ects the design of version 2 of

Synergeia, which will be released to European elemen-tary and secondary schools within the ITCOLE Projectin Fall 2002. It has already bene®ted substantially frominformal feedback from the review of version 1 bypedagogic partners in the Project and from the use ofversion 1 by teachers and students in the Winter andSpring 2002. The use of version 1 is currently beingsubjected to extensive evaluation in each of theparticipating countries. It is expected that this willreveal additional groupware requirements of the schoolsetting.

Version 2 of Synergeia will `go to school' in 50courses in Italy, Greece, the Netherlands and Finlandduring the Fall of 2002. This will again be subjected toformal evaluation using a variety of survey instruments.Data from the log ®les and classroom observations willbe analyzed with a mix of quantitative and qualitativemethods. Results of these evaluations should provideimportant insight into the eectiveness of the Synergeiaadaptations and extensions to groupware mechanismspresented in this paper.

There are many fundamental commonalities betweenCSCW and CSCL groupware requirements and the twocan build upon each other's accomplishments. However,the school setting, seen from a speci®c pedagogicalperspective, brings with it considerations that call forparticular treatments. In the case of the development ofSynergeia within the ITCOLE Project, we have seen thatit was necessary to develop a suite of functionality thatadapted generic CSCW forms of support to de®ne aunique educational environment. It is likely that as theCSCL extensions mature through testing and usage theywill feed back into suggestions for CSCW itself.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The ITCOLE Project is a collaboration of many peoplefrom universities and schools throughout Europe. Theproject was conceived largely by people in the Centre forResearch in Networked Learning and KnowledgeBuilding at the University of Helsinki and in the MediaLab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Muchof the Synergeia user interface was designed by theMedia Lab group. MapTool was implemented at theUniversity of Murcia. The project manager for ITCOLEat FIT is Wolfgang Appelt. The implementation of mostof the features described in this paper was done by theBSCW group at FraunhoferÐFIT, especially byRudolf Ruland and me. To carry out the adaptationof a complex system like BSCW in a way that takesadvantage of the strengths of its design and does notcontradict its philosophy would not be possible withoutdetailed guidance from the BSCW development sta,including Thomas Koch, Elke Hinrichs and GerdWoetzel, in addition to Rudolf. I am grateful to all the

people at FIT who made my year there possible,productive and enjoyable.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at theInternational Workshop on Groupware (CRIWG '02)in La Serena, Chile, September 1±3, 2002. A number ofCRIWG reviewers and participants made suggestionsthat signi®cantly improved this paper.

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BIOGRAPHY

Gerry Stahl writes on theory, system design andempirical investigation of computer supported colla-borative learning. He now teaches HCI, CSCW andCSCL graduate courses at the College of InformationScience and Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia,USA. He began his position there as Associate Professorin September 2002. The year before that he conductedresearch at Fraunhofer-FIT in Bonn, Germany, wherehe helped to design and develop Synergeia. Prior to thathe was a Research Professor in Computer Science at theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder. He has PhDs incomputer science (University of Colorado) and philos-ophy (Northwestern University). His website is www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry

174 G. STAHL