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Design of pedagogically sound collaborative learning (CL) activities is a complex task, but necessary if the goal is to support learning. Through the design of CL scenarios, a designer can define structures that increase the chance for learning to occur. It means that the effectiveness of the collaboration depends on the transformation of the designer΄s intentions into elements that will constitute the learning scenario. To support the creation of CL scenarios this paper presents an intelligent authoring tool that is equipped with the knowledge about different pedagogies and practices related to collaboration. Through the use of this information, the tool can provide intelligent guidance that support designers to create more effective CL scenarios. The results of an experiment suggest that our tool helps teachers to more easily introduce CL activities in classroom and creates favorable conditions for students to perform collaboration improving their overall learning performance throughout the year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mathematics domain of decimals, students have common and persistent misconceptions. These misconceptions have been identified, studied, and published by many researchers, spanning over 80 years of time. However, no paper discusses and brings together all of the identified misconceptions. This paper presents an initial taxonomy of decimal misconceptions, summarizing the results of past work. We also discuss the potential use and benefits of such a taxonomy in supporting the development of intelligent tutors that use erroneous examples as a learning tool for middle-school math students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of the most important characteristics to support learning of geometric concepts are (a) the possibility of allowing students to interact with geometric objects and (b) the capability of guiding these students during the process of interaction by helping them to discover interesting properties and to make ˵plausible″ conjectures. Available interactive/dynamic geometry software allow for rich interaction between geometric objects and users, but with no computational support for guiding students. This work presents an on-going effort to design an interactive geometry software, referred to iGeom, that have both interactive geometric objects that students can fully manipulate and the capability of helping students by providing personalized guidance and feedback when needed. iGeom have been developed in Java, freely available on internet (http://www.matematica.br/igeom), and can be easily incorporated into other programs such as learning managements systems or ITSs. To provide guidance capabilities we have been using CTAT (http://ctat.pact.cs.cmu.edu/), an authoring tool that facilitates fast development of cognitive tutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]