Collaborative learning is pointed out as an effective approach to reduce apprentices’ difficulties that arise during the effort to learn computer programming. In a collaborative learning process, the formation of groups is a fundamental activity and one of the most complex, because grouping students randomly is ineffective in obtaining real collaboration. PQAS and GroupOrganizer were developed to address the lack of tools that support group formation in the context of collaborative learning of computer programming. These tools form groups based on the theories of socio-cognitive conflict and learning styles. In order to stimulate the social-cognitive conflict, PQAS groups students with significant differences in programming style. GroupOrganizer extends PQAS and forms groups also considering students’ learning styles. Two experiments involving students taking introductory programming courses provide evidences that the adopted approaches contribute to increase students’ learning both in terms of programming style and workgroup skills.
Intelligent software agents have been becoming common in collaborative learning systems. In a previous study, this article's authors described the project and implementation of distributed intelligent pair-software development environment named AIDDES (in Portuguese: Ambiente Inteligente Distribuído de Desenvolvimento Emparelhado de Software). In this system, software developers work side by side on the program project and coding forming a pairing session. To mediate the team member's participation, the system counts on the help of Intelligent Agents for Verifying the Relevance of Comments and Identifiers (Agents that parse comments and identifiers on the produced source-code, intervening whenever necessary questioning irrelevant comments and identifiers) and Intelligent Agents of Mediation (Agents that evaluate the amount and relevance of Forum and Chat messages posted during a pairing session, intervening whenever necessary questioning the pair participation on the session's discussion topics).
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