A Smart Classroom Infrastructure for the Orchestration of Collaborative Inquiry

• In Event: Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Advanced Technologies for Learning Roundtable

Abstract

This paper advances the notion of a “smart classroom” for supporting knowledge communities in enacting real-time, collaborative inquiry activities. In such environments teachers must simultaneously manage changing student roles and groups, assign activities, and organize materials – including potentially large and diverse community-generated content. To support teachers in managing this orchestrational load we have developed SAIL Smart Space (S3), a framework for supporting smart classroom orchestration. S3 leverages real-time communication, data mining, and intelligent software agents to respond to emergent interaction patterns, supporting student inquiry, facilitating complex pedagogical moves, and providing the teacher with insight into community knowledge construction. This design-based study builds on previous S3 research, situating the activity within the context of an 11th-grade physics class’ culminating inquiry activity.

Authors

• Mike Tissenbaum, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• James D. Slotta, University of Toronto