Has research on collaborative learning technologies addressed massiveness?

Abstract

There is a growing interest in understanding to what extent innovative educational technologies can be used to/nsupport massive courses. Collaboration is one of the main desired elements in massive learning actions/ninvolving large communities of participants. Accumulated research in collaborative learning technologies has/nproposed and evaluated multiple models and implementation tools that engage learners in knowledge-intensive/nsocial interactions fostering fruitful learning. However, it is unclear to what extent these technologies have been/ndesigned to support large-scale learning scenarios involving arguably massive participation. This paper/ncontributes with a literature review that aims at providing an answer to this question as well as offering insights/nabout the context of use, characteristics of the technologies, and the types of activities and collaboration/nmechanisms supported. The main results point out that till 2013 the level of massiveness considered in top/nscientific journal papers on collaborative learning technologies was low, the scenarios studied were/npredominantly contextualized in co-located higher education settings using Learning Management Systems, the/nmost common activities considered were open and structured discussion, followed by peer assessment and/ncollaborative writing, and the most broadly used mechanism to foster fruitful collaboration was group formation/nfollowing diverse policies.