There is much positive research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments in asynchronous distributed learning groups (DLGs). There is also research that shows that contemporary CSCL environments do not completely fulfil expectations on supporting interactive group learning, shared understanding, social construction of knowledge, and acquisition of competencies. There appear to be two major pitfalls impeding achievement of the desired social interaction in CSCL environments: taking social interaction in groups for granted and the lack of attention paid to the social psychological dimension of social interaction outside of the task context. Current solutions offered to avoid the pitfalls placed responsibility on instructors and teachers to encourage collaborative learning and social interaction. To both free educators from this burden and be more cost effective, we propose an intelligent CSCL environment. The environment is based upon a theoretical framework that suggests embedding certain properties in the environment to act as social contextual facilitators- social affordances- to initiate and sustain learner’s social interactions. Finally, a group awareness widget (GAW)- a software tool providing the learner group awareness about the others in the task and in the non-task context- is introduced as an embodiment of this theoretical framework.

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Field observations report that contemporary computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments do not completely fulfill the expectations of both educators and learners regarding their potential for supporting interactive learning and collaborative knowledge construction. This raises questions amongst educators whether SL environments do indeed provide genuine opportunities for learning processes that rely on social interaction. We believe that one of the factors that may explain this is the generally accepted assumption that social interaction can be taken for granted. Social interaction in SL environments can no more be taken for granted than it can in face-to-face settings. A theoretical framework is presented proposing the support of social interaction by embedding certain properties in the SL environment that act as social contextual facilitators relevant for the learner's social interaction. We refer to these properties as social affordances. A group awareness widget (C4W) is a software tool providing the learner with group awareness on the others in different contexts while at the same time enabling the learner to communicate with them. We hypothesize that caws provoke social affordances and formulate guidelines for designing cA ws.

Abstract: Making educational materials freely available on the web can be seen as a noble enterprise in itself but as a way to address the call for people to become lifelong learners. The world is rapidly changing, requiring us to continuously update our knowledge and skills. A problem with this approach to lifelong learning is that the free materials that are made available are often both incomplete and unsuitable for independent learning in an online setting. The OpenER (Open Educational Resources) project at the Open Universiteit Nederland makes more than 20 short courses, originally developed for independent-study, freely available from the website www.opener.ou.nl. For our research we start from an envisioned online learning environment now under development. We then apply backcasting to select research topics and experiments that form steps from the current to the ultimate situation. This paper reports on two experiments that are an extension to standard forum software and the use of student notes to annotate learning materials: two small steps towards our ultimate open learning environment.