A Help Management System to Support Peer Instruction in Remote Laboratories

Abstract

Help between peers, intended to positively influence learning, appears as a suitable activity for inquiry learning. While several studies reveal evidence that effective help-seeking and help-giving behaviors can improve learning, virtual and remote laboratories do not provide sufficient support to enable these social interactions. Based on a set of criteria defined from existing literature, we designed a management system and implemented it in Lab4CE, a remote laboratory environment for Computer Education. The first results of two experimentations reveal that learners do not tend to help each other spontaneously, while the presence of a teacher increases self-confidence on help given.