Collaborative tools in educational practice

Research efforts in designing, developing, and evaluating collaborative learning technology pay off when this technology can be integrated into educational practice, creating new or enhanced opportunities for learning. This section discusses a few successful examples of this integration process. The tools and environments described over the next four chapters put the lessons learned from CSCL research into practice in the classroom, while taking care to address the dynamics and constraints of existing classroom processes. We begin with two chapters that discuss technological design considerations for the collaborative learning classroom, followed by three chapters that describe the possibilities afforded by integrating collaborative learning technology into educational practice.