No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Distance Learning (DL) comes as an alternative to meet the needs of students who look for a higher education degree, but live in remote regions and cannot travel to capitals or big cities, by lacking in time or money. Unfortunately, the high dropout and retention rates show that the use of DL in countries, such as Brazil, is far from the expected results. In this way, after the search and analysis of several theories/methods on collaborative learning, three approaches were chosen to be evaluated, which help to improve this reality. Then, such approaches were used as basis to a computational resource, called CollabEduc, whose main aim is to motivate collaboration among participants.

While virtual learning environments (VLEs) present several advantages, such as spacetime flexibility, they are still not including proper opportunities and resources for students to engage in collaborative activities with their peers. Recent approaches, for example, are based on resources that are not standard for VLEs or usual for students. Thus, their integration with VLEs is not simple. This paper conducted a theoretical investigation to identify strategies that could induce collaborative behaviours in students. These strategies were implemented as learning objects running in a VLE and a quasi-experimental research design was conducted with 133 students. The results show that the approach promotes collaborative interactions between students and also tend to improve their learning outcomes. Moreover, learning objects use a conceptualization that is already established over the e-learning community, simplifying their integration with VLEs.