MTClassroom and MTDashboard: supporting analysis of teacher attention in an orchestrated multi-tabletop classroom

In spite of the substantial progress in CSCL, there is still some distance between the promise of educational technology for classroom learning and what is readily achieved. Emerging tabletop devices can offer new means to enhance teachers' classroom control and awareness. These technologies can help them orchestrate activities, and capture, analyse and visualise students' collaborative interactions. This paper presents MTClassroom and MTDashboard, that were designed, deployed and tested to support the teacher in orchestrating collaborative learning activities at an authentic classroom. MTClassroom is an enriched multi-tabletop environment that captures aspects of students' activity as they work in small groups. MTDashboard is an orchestration tool displayed at a handheld device, giving the teacher control over classroom activities and providing 'real-time' indicators of participation and task progress of each group. We analysed teacher's attention by triangulating quantitative evidence captured by our environment with qualitative observations and teacher's perceptions. We investigated the affordances of our environment and the impact of the information provided to the teacher through the MTDashboard. The contribution of this paper is the novel approach for providing teachers with key indicators of small-group collaboration in the classroom and analysing their impact on teachers' attention to help them manage their time more effectively.