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This paper presents an innovative description and an initial implementation of the "Students Team Achievement Divisions (STAD)" collaboration method (Slavin, 1978), in the form of an online adaptive collaborative design-pattern that has been constructed taking into account adaptation techniques, within the context of an open-source learning design-based environments such as the LAMS system (Dalziel, 2003). This method is described with special reference to the learning of essential aspects of an Information System. The innovative description of the aforementioned collaborative method within the LAMS system is based on the fact that: (a) the tasks assigned to the groups consist of investigation of real world scenarios, and not merely the study of learning material as is usually proposed, (b) adaptive techniques are integrated with the method and (c) for the design of the collaborative learning activity, an intuitive learning design tool such as the LAMS system is used. A research study was also conducted aiming the development of an empirical model to allow the implementation of the aforementioned adaptive STAD collaborative method within the context of an IT work place, namely; the Legal Council of the Hellenic State. In fact, the data gathered from this study were used to build the initial learning profile of the user -that is needed for the implementation of Phase 2 of the previously mentioned adaptive STAD collaborative method- so that to be able to provide him/her personalized training, monitoring, scaffolding and evaluation. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Currently there is an increasing trend to implement functionalities that allow for the development of applications based on Cloud computing. In education there are high expectations for Learning Management Systems since they can be powerful tools to foster more effective collaboration within a virtual classroom. Tools can also be integrated with these systems that can provide assistance to students on any topic covered in class through the proliferation and popularity of publicly available Web APIs. However, generally most students and teachers still face technological barriers to access these resources and integrate them into their educational systems. This paper discusses an effort to overcome this problem by proposing a method of resource access through linked data, which is explicitly defined with semantic annotations related to the learning environment. Doing so, we are able to decorate the Cloud providers API's, thus providing easy integration into learning applications and important benefits for learning. The effectiveness of our approach has been measured and evaluated through usability methods and cognitive load theory principles.

Modern on-line collaborative learning environments are to enable and scale the involvement of an increasing large number of single/group participants who can geographically be distributed, and who need to transparently share a huge variety of both software and hardware distributed learning resources. As a result, collaborative learning applications are to overcome important non-functional requirements arisen in distributed environments, such as scalability, flexibility, availability, interoperability, and integration of different, heterogeneous, and legacy collaborative learning systems. In this paper, we present a generic platform, called Collaborative Learning Purpose Library, which is based on flexible fine-grained Web-services for the systematical construction of collaborative learning applications that need to meet demanding non-functional requirements. The ultimate aim of this platform is to enhance and improve the on-line collaborative learning experience and outcome in highly distributed environments.