133 IETI 38,2

ReŽ ning Collaborative Learning Strategies for Reducing

the Technical Requirements of Web-Based Classroom
Management
Chih-Kai Chang, Da-Yeh University, Taiwan

SUMMARY
When a web-based classroom teacher manages a web-based distance learning system, there can be a
substantial burden of preparation work. Although an instructor may use various tools to manage the
web-based classroom, an instructor also needs a web site manager to help him/her use tools such as
web page access analysis. In fact, some of the more tedious work can be avoided by using appropriate
collaborative learning strategies. However, the features of a conventional web-based distance learning
system cannot fully support the characteristics of collaborative learning strategies. To resolve this
problem, a web-based classroom teacher can use advanced technology for managing learners’
portfolios, controlling learning  ow and constructing collaborative learning activities. Another feasible
solution is that a teacher can reŽ ne existing collaborative learning strategies for web features to reduce
the requirements of the advanced technology. Furthermore, reŽ ning existing collaborative learning
strategies can make it easier to implement them in a web-based classroom. Although there are
methodologies for constructing web-based collaborative learning systems, none speciŽ cally address
the possibility of refining collaborative learning strategies to work with web features. This paper
surveys some notable collaborative learning strategies as well as proposing guidelines and
recommendations for how a web-based classroom teacher can reŽ ne those strategies for use in a web-
based classroom through our technical experience and perspective.

INTRODUCTION
Doyle (1986) indicates that a classroom is a Traditionally, an instructor manages a classroom by
highly complicated environment with features of means of appropriate control strategies. The types of
multi-dimensionality, simultaneity, immediacy, unpre- strategy that an instructor uses to manage a classroom
dictability, publicness and history. In our opinion, include group, activity, agenda, role, responsibility,
web-based classroom is more complicated than tradi- interdependence, etc. Those strategies are called
tional classroom because web technology is added. classroom management strategies. Many educators
Consequently, appropriate classroom management agree that using collaborative learning strategies
strategies are critical for web-based classrooms. can reduce an instructor’s efforts in classroom
Collaborative learning is one feasible management management. At the same time, collaborative learning
strategy for a web-based classroom. The definition strategies are also required to implement a web-based
of collaborative learning given by Salomon (1991) distance learning environment to promote learning
contains three major components: sharing, inter- motivation and learning performance (Leidner and
dependencies and involvement. Because learners will Fuller, 1997). Hence, guidelines are necessary for an
try to help each other in collaborative learning, collab- instructor’s training needs in using collaborative
orative learning strategies can reduce an instructor’s learning strategies on the web (Sherry and Morse,
work in a web-based classroom. Hence, many 1996). However, a teacher has difŽ culty in constructing
researchers use collaborative learning strategies in web- a learning activity because web features do not support
based or computer-supported classrooms (Brandon and collaborative styles of working. Moreover, a teacher
Hollingsheda, 1999; Collis, 1997; Ewing et al., 1998). must maintain the agenda of an activity because web
Innovations in Education and Teaching International
ISSN 1470-3297 print ISSN 1470-3300 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/13558000010030185
134 IETI 38,2
systems can not automate the agenda of an activity.
Consequently, a web-based classroom teacher must
make great efforts to manage his/her classroom without
classroom management strategies.
To construct a web environment for collaborative
learning, an instructor and a web site manager, who
is an expert of web technology, Ž rst need to explore
the various possible collaborative learning strategies
and extract their common characteristics. Then, an
instructor may discuss with a web site manger to see
comparisons between the characteristics of collab-
orative learning strategies and features of the web. For
instance, an instructor may want to know the answers
to questions such as ‘Are existing web technologies
sufficient for developing a virtual space for collab-
orative learning?’, ‘What are the efforts required
for an instructor to manage the web-based classroom
after constructing it?’, ‘Which kind of collaborative
learning strategies are most effective on the web?’,
‘Does using collaborative learning strategies in a
web classroom work as well as in a traditional class-
room?’, and so on. The standards, developed by the
International Society for Technology in Education,
state that all prospective teachers should have
‘knowledge of software evaluation and integration
guidelines’ and can make ‘use of technology to design
and develop student learning activities, and to assess
learning’ (ISTE, 1997). However, both instructor
and web site manager have no guidelines about the
relations between the technological efforts and their
effectiveness before constructing a web-based collabo-
rative learning environment. Thus, there should be
reports to depict the relationships between tech-
nological efforts and collaborative learning strategies
from both technical and pedagogical perspectives.
Thereafter, a distance learning instructor can
coordinate with a web site manager to construct an
effective web-based classroom with less effort.
The features for a collaborative learning strategy
include heterogeneous grouping, interdependence,
individual accountability, and group processing
(Warschauer, 1997). An instructor may ask the web
site manager to construct all of these features in the
web-based classroom. For instance, an instructor may
want to use Team Game Tournament (TGT) collab-
orative learning strategies (see below). However, a
web server is inherently passive, without a grouping
mechanism, so that it is very difficult to construct
collaborative learning activities. This problem is
called the learning activity construction problem.
Furthermore, a TGT strategy must control learning
flow among learning activities for its regrouping
requirements. That problem is called the learning  ow
management problem. Besides, the logs of a web server
can not provide enough information for an instructor of
the web-based classroom to make evaluations. That is
called the portfolio management problem. To solve
those problems from a purely technical perspective,
our previous research used active database, work ow,
and data cube technology to enhance the capability
of a web server (Chang and Chen, 1997; Chang et al.,
1998 ). In sum, the web site manger can overcome
difficulties of constructing a web classroom for
collaborative learning only with great efforts to
integrate various advanced technologies.
Frequently asked questions about our previous research
are ‘Is so much effort always needed for a web site
manager to satisfy an instructor’s requirements?’ or
‘Does a web site manager need to construct all features
of existing collaborative learning strategies for an
instructor to begin practising collaborative learning
activities on the web?’ In fact, the web site manager’s
burden can be greatly reduced if the instructor can make
an agreement about learning strategies with learners.
For instance, the instructor can announce the deadline
of a collaborative homework problem instead of using
the system to control the submitting homework
behaviour. Hence, the web site manager can temporar-
ily ignore that requirement and put more effort on other
more important requirements. To reduce the web site
manager’s efforts, three aspects of an instructor’s
requirements for using collaborative learning strategies
on web should be considered for reŽ nement.
First, an instructor using a web-based distance learning
system has the difŽ culty of constructing collaborative
learning activities because the web system does
not support role assigning, and learners’ behaviour
recording. If an instructor wants to heterogeneously
group learners in a web-based classroom, the instructor
needs to know ‘How was a learner’s learning perfor-
mance previously?’; ‘Which kind of role is suitable
for a learner?’; ‘What is the capability of a role, called
individual accountability, for a learner in a hetero-
geneous group?’, and so on. The present web system
can neither answer those questions by retrieving
information from the large amount of logs, nor endow
learners with a role. Hence, a web site manager may be
asked to develop programmes for retrieving meaning
from the logs of an existing web server. In fact, a
distance learning instructor can get all the required
information for management of a virtual classroom if
a web site manager is dedicated to those requirements.
These issues are referred as the heterogeneous
grouping requirements for constructing activities.

However, a teacher will have difŽ culty in constructing
a collaborative learning activity because the web was
not developed for collaborative learning. The teacher
must arrange the style of collaborative work and deŽ ne
what a group member can do. For instance, a teacher
may issue a homework assignment that should be
a collaborative task. This homework assignment is
divided into four parts, with each part assigned to a
particular group member and each group with a leader
who should combine the four parts into a complete
solution. For each individual part, the assigned member
can present his/her idea and solution, while other
members can provide only suggestions and comments.
However, the group leader can modify the partial
solution. Group members can only view the results
and discussion of their group, unless they are respon-
sible for handing out the results. In other words, an
instructor should be able to easily construct web-based
learning activities according to any speciŽ c strategy.
Every learner should be assigned a suitable role in the
proper learning activity. To provide a friendly and
familiar interface, various learning activities should
use a uniform interface. Furthermore, an instructor
should be able to reuse previous learning activities to
construct other learning activities. These are referred to
speciŽ cation and regulation problems in the activity
construction.
Second, an instructor does not have effective tools
to control the learning flow to allow learners’ inter-
dependence. Some works of previous studies have
attempted to manage the learning  ow of a learner on
the web, for instance the Guided Tour for Courseware
(Hauck, 1996) and Footsteps for a Quiz Activity (Nicol
et al., 1995). Those works devised mechanisms for
generating dynamic hyperlinks or views of a web
site to help the web site manger to manage learners’
learning  ow for collaborative learning. Thus, the web
site manager can easily generate web pages for speciŽ c
learning flows instead of rewriting web pages while
instructors change the collaborative learning strategies,
which will generally determine the learning flows.
However, that kind of solution requires a workflow
mechanism and a web site manager who is skilled
at transferring the learning flow of a collaborative
learning strategy into the workflow. Furthermore,
certain kinds of learning  ow are difŽ cult to transfer
into the work ow mechanism. If an instructor knows
the relationships between the interdependence and
capability of the workflow mechanism, the web site
manager can more smoothly transfer the requiring
learning flow into the workflow mechanism. These
issues are called interdependence requirements for
managing learning  ow.
Web-Based Classroom Management 135
A teacher must maintain the progress of an activity
because network tools can not automate the agenda of
an activity. Take the example of discussion activity.
The teacher must deŽ ne the deadline for the discussion
activities of groups and move learners into subsequent
collaborative learning activities. In addition, progress
in agenda of an activity may depend on certain tasks
that learners must Ž nish. However, an instructor can
not always monitor the progression of a collaborative
learning activity. These are called automating schedule
problems of the learning  ow issues.
Third, to analyse a learner’s behaviour, an instructor
must make a great effort to Ž nd pedagogical meanings
in the large volume of learners’ records. Recording
and diagnosing learners’ behaviour is tedious work
for an instructor in a distance learning environment;
especially to analyse the interaction patterns of collab-
orative learning. Although learners’ behaviour records
may have been properly recorded and analysed, an
instructor cannot easily determine the group pro-
cessing from learners’ portfolios to refine grouping
strategies or learning  ow of the collaborative learning
strategy. As the old saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a
thousand words’, just so an instructor needs an efŽ cient
means of reviewing group processing for a collab-
orative learning strategy. This issue may be called the
group processing requirements for portfolio manage-
ment.
Consequently, there should be a mechanism for com-
pletely recording group processes in a collaborative
learning activity. The mechanism should be able
to represent all the used data, including generated
and navigated. In other words, there should be a model
to integrate users’ behaviour records and generated
contents of a learning activity. Furthermore, there
should be a summary report period generated according
the instructor’s requirements to help an instructor
making decisions. Hence, an instructor can acknowl-
edge the situation of group processes to improve the
collaborative learning system. We call this issue the
recording and analysing problem of the portfolio
management issues.
In other words, a web site manager or a distance
learning instructor must make great effort to construct
and manage the additional components of a web server
due to the properties of collaborative learning strate-
gies. To reduce management efforts for collaborative
learning on the web, this paper proposes guidelines for
refining collaborative learning strategies to ease the
heterogeneous grouping, interdependence and group
processing requirements. Although the proposed
136 IETI 38,2
guidelines are not generally applicable to all collab-
orative learning strategies, they do extend our previous
research. The point here is that the web site manager
does not have to remember, or be bothered with
intricate, yet irrelevant, information; he/she can remain
focused on the validation task at hand. Hence, the web-
based collaborative learning environment will be more
easily constructed by a web site manager and managed
by a distance learning instructor.
AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE AND
GUIDELINES
It is assumed that an instructor would like to construct
a collaborative learning strategy, for this example TGT
(Team Game Tournament), on the web. The three steps
of one round for the TGT collaborative learning
strategy are:
(1) divide learners into heterogeneous groups for
collaboration;
(2) regroup learners into tournament for the honour
of their own groups;
(3) return to their own group for re ection.
A learner will get his/her points for his/her group,
which is determined in step one, in order of his/her
performance in a tournament group. In the next round,
learners will be assigned to suitable tournament groups
according to their performance in last round. Hence,
learners will help each other in the first step to get
Last
First
Figure 1 Team game tournament collaborative learning strategy
points for their own group. The purpose of step two
is to let every learner have the opportunity to get
points for their own group because step two assigns
learners to groups of learners with similar levels. The
last step enables learners to re ect on their behaviour
by returning to their own group and discussing their
performance with collaborative partners.
Figure 1 depicts a situation where nine students are
divided into three heterogeneous groups for TGT
collaborative learning. A1, A2 and A3 denote the
students in the group A, where the numbers of students’
identifications indicate their degrees mastering of
a learning topic. The organization of group B, C is
similar with group A. Students in the same group
can help each other mastering a learning topic. Then,
students at the same level are assigned to a tournament
group. Since students of a tournament group are
at the same level, every student has a fair chance
to win points for his/her own group (group A, B or
C). There are at least three rounds for the tournament
in this example because the instructor has to adjust
the tournament group by performance. For instance,
the best student of group TG2 in round one will be
promoted to group TG1. In contrast, the last student
of group TG1 in round one will be assigned to group
TG2. The adjusting mechanism will guarantee that
every student is assigned to a suitable tournament
group in the next round.
A web site manager should Ž rst construct the required
learning activities for TGT, that is discussion activities.
Last
First

For instance, the discussion activity needs hetero-
geneous learners to help each other learning. Initially,
the distance learning instructor should divide learners
into heterogeneous groups according their previous
learning performance. Thereafter, the web site manager
should develop mechanism for heterogeneous group-
ing, such as behaviour recording, online testing, and
so on. Furthermore, the web site manager has to endow
learners with suitable capabilities in an activity, that is
the concept of role. Then, the agenda of the collab-
orative learning activity should be deŽ ned and obeyed.
A web site manager has to develop or use additional
tools to satisfy the requirements for constructing
activities because web features do not innately include
the functionality for constructing activities.
In summary, a distance learning instructor may ask the
web site manager to be responsible for the following
tasks:
• constructing the role mechanism, which can specify
the capabilities and constraints of a user, in a
collaborative learning activity;
• automating and co-ordinating the agenda for every
group in the learning activity. This component
will check conditions to determine whether an
event occurs and responds to the event with stored
procedures;
• learners’ portfolio analyses. The results can help an
instructor improve instruction by managing the logs
and discovering patterns within them.
All the above tasks are very complex for implemen-
tation on the web. For instance, the role mechanism
should including the following features:
• various roles of a learning activity may share
common structure and behaviour, e.g. an instructor
and a teaching assistant both can scaffold learners;
• users can acquire and abandon roles dynamically,
e.g. a learner being a tutee may be promoted to a
tutor and may later be demoted if his/her learning
status is not sufŽ cient for the tutorial role;
• roles can be acquired and abandoned independently
of each other, e.g., a learner can be a tutee inde-
pendently of being a tutor;
• roles restrict access in a particular context, e.g. a
tutor can access a tutee’s answer to a specific
question, but another tutee can not.
Hence, it may not be best to directly transform the
collaborative learning strategies in a classroom to a
web-based learning environment.
Web-Based Classroom Management 137
The following sections depict the guidelines for
reŽ ning collaborative learning strategies to reduce the
complexity of implementing them on a web. First,
the role mechanism in a collaborative learning activity
can be replaced by embedding autonomic systems
in the collaborative learning strategies. Then, group
moderators can help coordinate the learning flow
among groups. Finally, embedding a feedback role or
system can help instructors to determine the group
processes in collaborative learning activities.
Autonomic systems instead of role mechanism
In practice, an instructor can reduce both construction
and management efforts by embedding autonomic
systems into a collaborative learning strategy. For
instance, learners can divide themselves into hetero-
geneous groups by ranking each other. An instructor
can ask every learner to answer a questionnaire about
the other learners, who are also in the same discussion
activity or tournament activity, as the source for
ranking. Instead of providing a mechanism for online
testing, the web site manager just provides the func-
tionality for learners to rank each other by an indicator
coming from learning performance, social skills,
motivation, etc. Furthermore, heterogeneous grouping
requires a learner’s background information, such as
race, Ž rst language, majority, etc. Most of the infor-
mation can not be easily collected by distance learning
instructors, but learners will know the background of
each other and will reveal the knowledge through the
ranking function.
The autonomic system should consider the following
functions.
Ranking. This functionality of the autonomic system
can be used for heterogeneous grouping because the
ranking results will categorize learners. For instance,
one of the items in a ranking questionnaire may ask
learners to rank each other from degree A to E about
their mastery of a specific topic. Just as aforemen-
tioned, the dimensions of the ranking questionnaire
are chosen to measure learners’ ‘honest weight’ in their
mind’s eye of each other. Then, the instructor can use
the ranking results to group learners. An instructor
needs to ask learners to rank only their partners in
a group or a competing group because a learner cannot
know the learning degrees of others that he/she has
never contacted. The instructor can normalize the
ranking results to suit the required number of members
in a group if the ranking results are presented in a
percentage form.
138 IETI 38,2
Voting. The functionality of the voting mechanism is
similar to the ranking functionality, but the purpose of
voting functionality is to choose the most suitable
learner for a speciŽ c role from a group according to
personal characteristics. Instead of assigning roles to
learners, this facility lets learners recommend someone
for a role. Hence, the instructor or web site manager
need not make efforts to arrange every learner to
his/her suitable role. For instance, the moderator is one
of the roles in the discussion activity of the TGT
strategy. Because a moderator should be responsible
for maintaining the agenda in time and coordinating
with other moderators, learners should vote for a
learner with proper characteristics to play this role.
Accountability . This functionality means that a
learner’s role determines his/her capabilities. In
general, the collaborative learning system has to
determine that a role does something (Chang and
Chen, 1997). The instructor can design daily routines
for each role to maintain. Consequently, every learner
should be responsible for some tasks that can only be
executed by the capabilities of his/her playing role.
Consequently, both a web site manager’s burden and
an instructor’s web-based classroom management
efforts can be reduced by the aforementioned auto-
nomic functionality. Figure 2 illustrates how learners’
autonomic behaviour supports a collaborative learning
strategy in operation.
Figure 2 Learners’ autonomic systems support
collaborative learning activities
Moderator coordination supports learning  ow
management
Subsequently, a web site manager should determine
the learning  ow among learning activities according
to the learning flow of the TGT strategy. In other
words, the web site manager should develop a mech-
anism to coordinate learners of an activity with other
learners of the same activity. For instance, the group
that first finishes the discussion activity has to wait
for other groups. In our previous research, this
interdependent relationship is called and-join learning
 ow, which means that the subsequent learning activity
is activated only after all the prior learning activities are
Ž nished. And-join is one of the learning  ow types that
the instructor or web site manager should make efforts
to control. Hence, we previously presented a model for
the instructor to depict the learning  ow in the required
collaborative learning strategy, as well as a method-
ology for the web site manager to manage the learning
 ow based on work ow technology (Chang and Chen,
1998).
The requirements of managing learning flows for
collaborative learning include regrouping learners,
learning activity coordination and maintaining strat-
egy constraints. After a collaborative learning activity
is Ž nished, learners of the previous learning activity
may be arranged into different groups, a process
called regrouping learners. For instance, learners in
the same discussion group of the TGT strategy will
be distributed to different tournament groups. Some
collaborative learning strategies need to construct
the interdependent relationships among learning
activities; hence learning activity coordination is
necessary. For instance, in the TGT strategy the
tournament activity can not start until all previous
discussion activities are finished. Sometimes the
collaborative learning strategy should be modified
before being applied to some situations, which is called
maintaining strategy constraints. For instance, an
instructor cannot directly use the TGT strategy on 13
learners because the number of learners can not be
exactly grouped.
In addition to using a technical perspective, a distance
learning instructor can reduce gaps between the
requirements of managing learning  ow and work ow
technology by adding a co-ordinate subsystem into
his/her collaborative learning strategy. If the moderator
of the group can notify other moderators of other
groups, the web site manager can ignore the and-join
learning  ow and make more efforts to manage other
kinds of learning  ow. The moderator of the notiŽ ed

group must agree to reply to the notiŽ cation after Ž nish-
ing the current learning activity. Similarly, moderators
can handle the or-join learning flow requirements,
which means that the subsequent learning activity
is activated by coordinating agenda if one of the
previous learning activities is Ž nished. Consequently,
learners are interdependent because they should notify
or wait for the notification to do something in the
learning  ow. Figure 3 illustrates how the coordinate
subsystem reduces management efforts for the learning
 ow.
Our previous work classified learning flow require-
ments for collaborative learning into six categories.
Besides the and/or-join operations, and/or-split ,
sequence, and iteration operations are necessary for
controlling learning flow among learning activities
(Chang and Chen, 1998). Although an instructor or
web site manager can define the required learning
 ow by those operations, some styles of the required
learning flow can be implemented by asking users
playing the speciŽ c role of every group to do some-
thing. For instance, the moderator of a discussion
activity should acknowledge the agenda and push
the group to Ž nish the discussion in time. Hence, the
requirements for learning flow management can be
largely reduced by the coordination of learners who
play a speciŽ c role in every group.
Learners’ assessments support evaluating group
processing
Finally, the web site manager must record learners’
behaviour and learning performance during an activity
to permit the heterogeneous grouping and learning
flow managing requirements in the next stage.
Although a web server can provide system log Ž les,
such as learners’ access records, a distance learning
instructor requires a report with pedagogical meaning.
Hence, the web site manager has to develop or use
tools for monitoring, managing, and mining learners’
portfolios. Furthermore, the web site manager should
provide a friendly interface for an instructor to under-
stand the generated reports. The purpose of the friendly
interface, called multidimensional analysis in our
previous work, is to display reports in any style asked
for by instructors. However, the issues observed by an
instructor are dynamic and can rarely be predicted.
Hence, we use data cube technology to support the web
site manager in providing report service to instructors.
Table 1 shows how to support a web site manager when
producing a web site that satisŽ es the requirements of
web-based collaborative learning.
Web-Based Classroom Management 139
A distance learning instructor can help to reduce the
web site manager’s portfolio management efforts
by reŽ ning the collaborative learning strategies. In our
opinion, there are other ways to support an instructor
recording learners’ behaviour, analysing behaviour
records and making decisions. These additional guide-
lines include daybook, moderators’ comments, and
learners’ questionnaires.
A distance learning instructor can first design a
daybook according to the pedagogical issues that
he/she wants to observe. One specific role of any
learning activity should take the accountability to write
down the events related to the items, which is deŽ ned
by the instructor, in the daybook. Hence, a distance
learning instructor can review the key processes of
collaborative learning by reviewing the daybook that
is written by the student with a speciŽ c role. Figure 4
depicts the  ow of daybook use as the infrastructure of
a recording system for the collaborative learning
strategy. Furthermore, the workload of the web site
manager is reduced by developing tools to help the
instructor design the daybook instead of developing a
methodology to retrieve pedagogical meaning from
learners’ behaviour records. Although we proposed in
previous research a methodology to solve the learners’
portfolios management issue by data cube and multi-
dimensional analysis technology, the web site manager
cannot master those skills over the short term.
Moderators’ comments can be used to indicate possible
directions for behaviour records analysis because
a moderator will realize the problems in his/her group.
A distance learning instructor can easily get the
moderators’ comments either by periodic email or a
web page for feedback. Hence, a distance learning
instructor can avoid using the cube operations for
multidimensional analysis but yet can get the same
required results.
The results of learners’ questionnaires can be used to
verify moderators’ comments. Furthermore, a distance
learning instructor needs not reconstruct the collab-
orative learning processes before making decisions
using the verification from learners’ questionnaires
results. Consequently, the instructor can free the web
site manager from the tedious tasks of computing cube
visualization.
To summarize, an instructor may expect to simply
transfer an existing collaborative learning strategy into
the web format and get similar effects on learners. From
the perspective of the instructor, four features should
be implemented on the web, these are heterogeneous
140 IETI 38,2

Figure 3 Moderators’ coordination for interdependence instead of managing learning  ow

grouping, interdependence, individual accountability
and group processing. From the perspective of the web
site manager, the collaborative learning strategies will
involve technical requirements including activity,
learning flow and portfolio management. As in
the examples mentioned above, an instructor could
motivate learners’ autonomic behaviour by refining
collaborative learning strategies to reduce classroom
management efforts and technical requirements. Table
2 illustrates the relationships among learners’ types of
autonomic behaviour, collaborative learning strategies,
and ways to reduce technical requirements.
first make clear to learners their expected autonomic
behaviours and let learners realize the importance
of their autonomic behaviours. Then, the web site
manager can implement the required mechanism for
the reŽ ned collaborative learning strategies. The web
site manager should also build the basic mechanism
for collaborative learning, such as discussion, assigned
reading, lectures and so on. Finally, an instructor can
transfer the collaborative learning strategies onto the
web. Thus, the reŽ ned collaborative learning strategies
will operate well on the web with the support of
learners’ autonomic behaviours.

There are three components for transferring collab-

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE orative learning strategies in order to provide the
functionality mentioned in the guidelines. First, fill-
To apply the guidelines for refining collaborative out forms and CGI programs are responsible for
learning strategies, a distance learning instructor should accumulating learners’ feedback information. This

Table 1 Supporting portfolio analysis from a technical perspective

Requirements Reason Data cube technology

Pedagogical records of the group Constructing relations among various Cube repository
discussion issues

Extracting relations between Manipulating cube from various Cube operations for multidimensional
variables perspectives analysis

Observable behaviour patterns and Showing relations graphically Cube visualization

predication

Figure 4 Integrating daybook and feedback strategies supports group processing evaluation
component is used to store raw data about learners’
opinions for the ranking and voting mechanism.
Second, a sub-communication system for group leaders
should be implemented as a learning flow control
mechanism to adjust the agenda of every group. This
part provides functionality similar to email on the
web for the group leader to evaluate the status of other
groups. Third, a database is developed for storing
information from ranking, voting, daybook entries,
comments and questionnaires from the reŽ ned collab-
orative learning strategies. Hence, a distance learning
instructor can use the information provided by the
database to support the web-based classroom manage-
ment tasks, for instance, heterogeneous grouping or
learning flow management. Furthermore, a distance
learning instructor can also review his/her hypotheses
by the multidimensional operators.
Figure 5 illustrates the system framework for inte-
grating the aforementioned guidelines into a distance
learning environment. The upper blocks denote
learners before they join a collaborative learning
activity in the system architecture. First, learners will
be asked to enter their user name and password as
identiŽ cation. Then, learners can use the identiŽ cation
code to access all the other WWW pages. In general,
learners should be divided into groups in collaborative
learning activity. Instead of division of the learners by
the instructor or web site manager, every learner must
Ž ll out a form (a web page) that asks his/her opinions
about other learners’ levels. For instance, if there are 50
learners, then each learner has to evaluate Ž ve learners’
Web-Based Classroom Management 141
levels and each learner has to rank ten percentages of
other learners. Implementation of this part can be easily
achieved by integrating the form with a database, such
as Microsoft’s ASP or IDC with IIS 4.0 server. After a
learner is assigned to a group, he/she can compete for
roles. However, a voting process will Ž nally determine
every learner’s role. From the technical perspective,
the voting mechanism is almost the same as the ranking
mechanism. Finally, a learner’s portfolios will main-
tain the role he/she plays. Hence, only the learner
playing a specific role can access certain web pages
related to the accountability of the speciŽ c role. For
instance, only the moderator of a discussion activity
can access the web page to notify other moderators
or receive notifications sent by other moderators.
Consequently, a distance learning instructor can know
which learner should be responsible for learning  ow
and portfolios management.
A distance learning instructor now has a learner
organization to support the operations of desired
collaborative learning strategies. The learner orga-
nization can support the system operations in two
aspects. For learning flow management, a distance
learning instructor only needs to announce the deadline
of a collaborative learning activity on the web page of
a role’s accountability. Then, groups will co-ordinate
to achieve the instructor’s goal. For portfolio manage-
ment, a distance learning instructor only needs to
indicate the observing issues through an interface
developed by the web site manager. The system will
generate a daybook template and put it on the speciŽ c
142 IETI 38,2

Figure 5 System framework for proposed collaborative learning strategy reŽ nements

role’s accountability web pages. The data, called CONCLUSION

metadata, coming from the learner organization will
be stored in a repository of the database, separate from
the collaborative learning system logs. Metadata is
very useful for retrieving meanings from system logs
and clarifying uncertainty in system logs. For instance,
metadata can be used as the hierarchy structure, which
is usually constructed by the web site manager, for
multidimensional analysis. Hence, the reŽ ned collab-
orative learning system can reduce the efforts of both
the distance learning instructor and the web site
manager.
This paper provides guidelines for a web site manager
to coordinate with a distance learning instructor for
reŽ ning collaborative learning strategy. Consequently,
the reŽ ned collaborative learning strategy will reduce
the web site manager’s efforts in constructing the
collaborative environment on the web, and also reduce
the distance learning instructor’s efforts in managing
the virtual classroom on the web. This paper also brie y
introduces the required technology and the method
of constructing a web-based collaborative learning

Table 2 Relationships between technical requirements and reŽ nements of collaborative learning strategies

Technical requirements Characteristics of collaborative Suggested reŽ nements

learning strategy

Assign group Heterogeneous grouping Ranking

Assign role Voting

Endow capability Individual accountability Accountability

Agenda Interdependence Notifying others

Automate agenda NotiŽ ed by others

Repository for behaviour records Group processing Designing daybook and

appending daybook
Multidimensional analysis Moderators’ comments and learners’
questionnaires
 Web-Based Classroom Management 143

system from our previous research. However, that Nicol, D, Smeaton, C and Slater, A F (1995) Footsteps:
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for the web site manager due to its tedious technical Salomon, G (1991) What does the design of effective cscl
require and how do we study its effects? SIGCUE
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Outlook, Special Issue on CSCL, 21, 3, 62–68.
learning strategy, we present guidelines for refining Sherry, L and Morse, R (1996) An assessment of training
collaborative learning strategies from our technical needs in the use of distance education for instructor,
perspective. A collaborative learning example, the Educational Technology Review, Winter, No. 5, 10–17.
Team Game Tournament, is used to illustrate how the Warschauer, M (1997). Computer-mediated collaborative
guidelines reduce the work needed for implementation. learning – theory and practice, Modern Language
Hence, a distance learning instructor can use existing Journal, 81, 4, 470–481.
collaborative learning strategies and shape them to
be suitable for implementation on the web with
relatively little effort. Most important of all, the BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
guidelines indicate the directions for the instructor
and web site manager to achieve a common goal of Dr Chih-Kai Chang is an assistant professor of
constructing a web-based collaborative learning information management at the Da-Yeh University,
environment. Taiwan. His research interests include educational
technology and collaborative learning. His publications
have appeared in Journal of Computer Assisted
Learning, International Journal of Educational
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