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This study investigates small group collaborative learning with a technologysupported environment. We aim to reveal key aspects of collaborative learning by examining variations in interaction, the influence of small group collaboration on science knowledge integration, and the implications for individual knowledge mastery. Results underscore the importance of high-quality science discourse and user-friendly tools. The study also highlights that group-level negotiations may not always affect individual understanding. Overall, this research offers insights into the complexities of collaboration and its impact on science learning. 

This study explored the Idea Wall, a collaborative knowledge-building tool to support students’ collaboration in small groups during a plant biology science curriculum. We examined the affordances and challenges of the Idea Wall and found the effective use of the tool's spatial organization capabilities by students, particularly the Yup Zone and the intermediary neutral spaces, for collaboratively organizing notes. But there's also a need for improvements in some features of the tool’s design and instructional guidance. 

Attempting the hands-on activities typical of makerspaces without in-person expert facilitation can lead to frustration and decreased engagement. This study aims to explore the collaboration affordances of REACH, a novel communication device that allows users to share gestures around a common artifact while in separate locations. Using a modified version of the divergent collaborative learning mechanisms framework (DCLM), this paper highlights the affordances of REACH to support students in collaboratively engaging in joint attention and boundary spanning perception and action, even when they are physically disparate. 

Computer-aided simulation-based platforms have been shown to be effective tools for teaching STEM concepts. At the same time, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) platforms encourage different viewpoints and approaches from the learners which can enrich the learning experience in STEM classrooms. The deployment in recent years of networked personal devices such as Chromebooks in classrooms has motivated educators to design collaborative learning tools for these devices. However, prior work has shown that using one-on-one devices may discourage students from talking among each other, which hinders collaboration. To understand the affordances of personal devices for CSCL tools within Biology curricula, we designed a collaborative plant growth simulation application that provides mirrored plant growth simulation views for every group member to facilitate a common visualization. In this paper, we present our findings from an in-the-wild study that evaluated the affordance and usability of the plant growth simulation application and investigated the nature of collaboration and engagement aided through the simulation mirroring feature. Our study results showed that the plant simulation application had high usability and acceptance. Moreover, mirroring the plant growth simulation improved collaboration, generated excitement, and stimulated conversation. We also identified episodes where collaboration was hindered due to off-task activities, troubleshooting, group dynamics, and lack of understanding that led us to outline some potential guidelines to improve the collaborative learning experience for the students in Biology classroom. 

With a focus on learning through personally relevant projects, students in makerspaces engage in meaningful design. Maker portfolios are increasingly being used to capture and assess progress and learning in these spaces. The Connected Spaces Dashboard focuses on maker identity development and collaboration between makers in and across makerspaces. We implemented a prototype version of the Dashboard in Spring 2023, in two after-school makerspaces. Analysis of two student interviews and Dashboard profiles highlighted the aspects of the tool that were effective (e.g., student affinities) and those that needed improvement (e.g., its ambient presence). We utilize these findings to inform the development of the next version of the Dashboard. 

In education, we cherish success and fear failure. But not every learning experience is a success right away, in fact failing and making mistakes and then learning from them is the norm rather than the exception. In this symposium, we present different perspectives on how failure can contribute to constructionist learning and teaching, examining how learners identify and address failures in their designs and how distinct approaches to failure can support learners in collaboratively creating personally meaningful projects. Taking a holistic approach to failure—that incorporates cognitive, social, and affective factors—we argue that failure should play a key role in constructionism and present different perspectives for finding a more productive stance that turns failures into rich opportunities for constructionist learning and teaching. 

Focusing on developing maker-identities, especially for historically marginalized students in the computational field, can empower them to recognize and take ownership of their space in the field. Drawing from identity related literature in maker and computing related fields we identified seven factors of maker-identity - interest and motivation, competence and performance, confidence and self-efficacy, recognition, utility value and meaningfulness, perceptions of community, and external factors. Using this, we analyzed semi-structured interviews of students who participated in our summer makerspace camp to understand how these identity factors manifested in their reflections of the camp. We tie back our findings of positive impacts on maker-identity structures to the design structures of our makerspace such as co-design of the space, use-modify-create strategies, and open-ended design projects. 

The Idea Wall is a collaborative technology that aims to support collective knowledge construction and idea negotiation across multiple social configurations. Further, to support multiple entry points for student collaboration, the Idea Wall provides (and requires) multiple modalities for interaction through text, collaborative discourse, and spatial orientation of ideas. To support the teacher in implementing and orchestrating Idea Wall activities, we designed: 1) an authoring portal to enable teachers to quickly create Idea Wall instances; 2) a whole class view to support whole class discussions; and 3) a set of real-time agents that can alert the teacher when students may need teacher intervention or new groupings based on natural language processing of students’ co-constructed ideas within the Idea Wall. 

There has been a large push in education over the last decade to drive STEM learning interest during the formative years of adolescence through the usage of engaging computer science related initiatives such as computational makerspaces that allow students to design and build a wide array of personally connected artifacts. But for these initiatives to work, students must be interested in the journey, and the curricula that drive many of these programs are not often designed to be culturally relevant to many of the students they are aimed at motivating. This paper investigated how computational making curricula can be designed in a reflexive and culturally supportive manner by following the trajectory and tensions faced by a black middle school student as he makes his way through the first iteration of such a space.