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With the growing integration of technology in the classrooms, learners can now develop collaboration skills by applying them across diverse contexts. While this represents a great opportunity, it also brings challenges due to an increased need to support individual learners across multiple learning activities. We propose a technology-enhanced learning ecosystem called UbiCoS that supports learner help-giving during face-to-face collaboration and across three different digital learning environments: an interactive digital textbook, an online Q&A forum, and a teachable agent. In this paper, we present a first step in the development of UbiCoS: five co-design sessions with 16 learners that give insight into learners’ perceptions of help-giving. The findings provided us with technology-related and curriculum-related design opportunities for facilitating learner interaction across multiple platforms. 

A key promise of adaptive collaborative learning support is the ability to improve learning outcomes by providing individual students with the help they need to collaborate more effectively. These systems have focused on a single platform. However, recent technology-supported collaborative learning platforms allow students to collaborate in different contexts: computer-supported classroom environments, network based online learning environments, or virtual learning environments with pedagogical agents. Our goal is to better understand how students participate in collaborative behaviors across platforms, focusing on a specific type of collaboration - help-giving. We conducted a classroom study (N = 20) to understand how students engage in help-giving across two platforms: an interactive digital learning environment and an online Q&A community. The results indicate that help-giving behavior across the two platforms is mostly influenced by the context rather than by individual differences. We discuss the implications of the results and suggest design recommendations for developing an adaptive collaborative learning support system that promotes learning and transfer.