Supporting teachers' intervention in students' virtual collaboration using a network based model

This paper reports a Design-Based Research project developing a tool (the Process Tab) that supports teachers' interventions with students in virtual internships. The tool uses a networked approach and allows insights into the discourse of groups and individuals based on contributions in chat fora and assignments. In the paper, we present the tool and reports from interviews with three teachers who used the tool. The interviews provide insights about the teachers' hopes, actual use, and difficulties with the tool. The main insight is that even though the teachers genuinely liked the idea and specific representations of the Process Tab, their lack of ability to teach and look at the tool at the same time hindered their use. In the final part of the paper, we discuss how to address this issue.