Unpacking traces of collaboration from multimodal data of collaborative concept mapping at a tabletop

During collaborative student work, teachers aim to support groups effectively and ensure that each group member can contribute at some level. Analysing the final product of group work does not reveal individual contributions or the collaborative process. This research investigates indicators of collaborative learning, captured by a novel tabletop environment, which can provide real-time information about the ongoing collaborative work. This can enable teachers to direct their attention more effectively. This paper reports findings from a case study on collaborative concept mapping. Five triads of university students engaged in a collaborative activity on the topic of human nutrition. The variables, level of participation, symmetry of participation, similarity of previous knowledge, knowledge contribution, transactivity, interaction and knowledge creation, were used to describe the collaborative process. Results offer promise for transforming this collaboration data to give informative feedback to teachers and support collaborative learning.