Cognitive Group Awareness Tools: versatile devices to guide learners towards discrepancies

Abstract

Collaborative practices cover a vast variety of contexts and educational goals. Despite these differences, most means of support draw on between- and within-learner discrepancies as driving forces of individual and collaborative learning. These discrepancies are a focus of cognitive Group Awareness Tools, that process knowledge-related learner data and feed it back to the group to ease the interpretation of the learning situation thereby guiding collaborative learning activities. In this paper, we examine the features and different characteristics of these tools. Based on three exemplary cognitive Group Awareness Tools focusing on different types of knowledge discrepancies, we explore how data processing is adjusted to different settings and discuss whether cognitive Group Awareness Tools are suitable devices to be deployed throughout various educational contexts.