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Collaboration scripts are activity programs which aim to foster collaborative learning by structuring interaction between learners. Computer-supported collaboration scripts generally suffer from the problem of being restrained to a specific learning platform and learning context. A standardization of collaboration scripts first requires a specification of collaboration scripts that integrates multiple perspectives from computer science, education and psychology. So far, only few and limited attempts at such specifications have been made. This paper aims to consolidate and expand these approaches in light of recent findings and to propose a generic framework for the specification of collaboration scripts. The framework enables a description of collaboration scripts using a small number of components (participants, activities, roles, resources and groups) and mechanisms (task distribution, group formation and sequencing). However, when learners are left to their own devices, they rarely engage in productive interactions such as asking each other questions, explaining and justifying their opinions, articulating their reasoning, or elaborating and reflecting upon their knowledge. Collaboration scripts aim to foster collaborative learning in shaping the way in which learners interact with one another. In specifying a sequence of learning activities, together with appropriate roles for the learners, collaboration scripts are designed to trigger engagement in social and cognitive activities that would otherwise occur rarely or not at all.Collaboration scripts are based upon the scripted cooperation approach, as described by O'Donnell (1999), which differs from other collaborative learning approaches chiefly in the fact that it focuses on the specific activities that learners are expected to engage in, whereas others leave them unspecified or vague. In targeting those activities which have

Over the next 10 years, we anticipate that personal, portable, wirelessly-networked technologies will become ubiquitous in the lives of learners-indeed, in many countries, this is already a reality. We see that ready-to-hand access creates the potential for a new phase in the evolution of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), characterized by "seamless learning spaces" and marked by continuity of the learning experience across different scenarios (or environments), and emerging from the availability of one device or more per student ("one-to-one"). One-to-one TEL has the potential to "cross the chasm" from early adopters conducting isolated design studies to adoption-based research and widespread implementation, with the help of research and evaluation that gives attention to the digital divide and other potentially negative consequences of pervasive computing. We describe technology-enhanced learning and the affordances of one-to-one computing and outline a research agenda, including the risks and challenges of reaching scale. We reflect upon how this compares with prior patterns of technology innovation and diffusion. We also introduce a community, called "G1:1," that brings together leaders of major research laboratories and one-to-one TEL projects. We share a vision of global research, inviting other research groups to collaborate in ongoing activities.

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Macro scripts structure collaborative learning and foster the emergence of knowledge-productive interactions such as argumentation, explanations and mutual regulation. We propose a pedagogical model for the designing of scripts and illustrate this model using three scripts. In brief, a script disturbs the natural convergence of a team and in doing so increases the intensity of interaction required between team members for the completion of their collaborative task. The nature of the perturbation determines the types of interactions that are necessary for overcoming it: for instance, if a script provides students with conflicting evidence, more argumentation is required before students can reach an agreement. Tools for authoring scripts manipulate abstract representations of the script components and the mechanisms that relate components to one another. These mechanisms are encompassed in the transformation of data structures (social structure, resources structure and products structure) between script phases. We describe how this pedagogical design model is translated into computational structures in three illustrated scripts.

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We report on an exploratory study of the relationship between grounding and problem solving in multi-modal computer-mediated collaboration. We examine two different media, a shared whiteboard and a MOO environment that includes a text chat facility. We study how the acknowledgment rate (how often partners give feedback of having perceived, understood, and accepted partner's contributions) varies according to the media and the content of interactions.We expected that the whiteboard would serve to draw schemata that disambiguate chat utterances. Instead, results show that the whiteboard is primarily used to represent the state of problem solving and the chat it is used for grounding information created on the whiteboard. We interpret these results in terms of persistence: more persistent information is exchanged through the more persistent medium. The whiteboard was used as a shared memory rather than a grounding tool.