Integrating tools and resources: a case study in building educational groupware for collaborative programming

Abstract

This paper presents design implications for educational groupware as revealed by GHT (Group Homework Tool), a same time di#erent place groupware tool built to support synchronous, collaborative coding among novice programmers. We detail the design, implementation, evaluation, and redesign of GHT, focusing on the issues of awareness, control, evaluation and sca#olding. GHT capitalizes on trends of technology and collaboration in the traditional learning environment by supporting distance learning, remote access to TAs and tutors, and facilitating co-located and remote group work. Constructing such software for a computer science curriculum provides unique challenges as one must integrate the tools used by a programmer, the resources used by a learner, and the widgets used to support group interaction. By combining common groupware components with our own shared editor we were able to exploit the educational benefits in a modified version of extreme programming [1]. Our research informs future design e#orts by building upon previous investigations of integrated, cooperative software in a learning environment [10, 12, 11].