Active participation and collaborative learning leveraged by interactive digital sticky notes technology

This study examines 10 weeks of collaborative learning activities that are supported by the GroupScribbles (GS) software technology in 2 Singapore Primary 4 Science classrooms. It is found that GS supports instant formative feedback from students and from teachers effectively. GS plays a positive role at both the level of individual learners and that of group learners. Several emergent collaboration behaviors manifested by students in GS were observed. With GS, the construction of knowledge is distributed across individual learners when they engage in social discourse within the activities. Students were found to have more opportunities to participate in class discussions to share and were better able to organize their ideas by using GS. The results show that the GS classes performed better than non-GS classes as measured by traditional assessments. Copyright © 2008 Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.