DS-CSCL 2013 - The 1st International Workshop on Design and Spontaneity in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (DS-CSCL-2013)

The workshop "Design and Spontaneity in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning" (DS-CSCL) will take place in conjunction with the 19th International Conference on Control Systems and Computer Science (CSCS19), 29-31 May 2013, at the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, University Politehnica of Bucharest.
The DS-CSCL workshop is a meeting place for professionals in collaborative systems and in instructional technologies from academic and industry arenas, aiming to kindle dialogue and productive inquiries of socio-technical communities of learning.
Learning is an omnipresent process in communities of all purposes - from education in formal settings, to sense-making and problem-solving in team projects, and continuous career development (along technical, managerial, commercial dimensions etc). We invite inquiries into learning processes at various scales of time and place: local, ad-hoc solutions to unexpected problems; long-term cumulative knowledge production; learning in small, face-to-face teams, or in large, distributed, online communities; learning that is materialized in durable artifacts, and learning that is observed in fleeting, situated behaviors.
Computers and other information technologies have become backbones of communities of practice - fostering new acquaintances, mediating communication, synchronizing and bridging interactions, archiving and indexing information, supporting identity work and reputations. We welcome contributions that look at how information technology makes a difference in a given project: how does technology open novel possibilities of interaction? How does it bridge (or open) distances in time, space - or social distances? What are the side effects of technological mediation?
Call for Papers
You are welcome to send the CfP (in PDF format) to your friends and colleagues working in the field.
Workshop Topics
We invite full papers on the following topics, or related subjects of interest:
Design and practice in CSCL systems: case studies that present actual implementations of CSCL projects and discuss how envisaged functionalities were taken over by participants and adjusted to needs and challenges;
Designing for diversity: users of any system are unavoidable diverse in interests and approaches; how do CSCL systems take into account, adapt and rely on this diversity? How are inequalities made visible and managed in CSCL projects?
Technical challenge: how do social needs challenge engineers to design innovative solutions? How are social needs formulated in design requirements? How are cutting-edge technologies, or other (older, lateral) non-mainstream technologies discovered and rediscovered to tackle specific problems? Some of the envisaged technologies and architectures are: Wikis and other collaborative tools, Social Networking Platforms, Natural Language Processing, Serious Gaming Platforms, Social Networks Analysis, Middleware for Mobile Collaborative Systems, Peer-to-Peer Architectures.
Dialogue and conflict: the design, implementation and adaptation of a collaborative system requires dialogue and stirs divergence and conflict; how do CSCL systems cope with conflicts in communities of users and developers?
Design and adaptation: how do participants (designers, students, tutors) diagnose problems in the functioning of a CSCL system, and how do they create adaptive solutions? How do long-term CSCL projects evolve from one edition to another?
Design and gameplay: what are the challenges and opportunities of serious games and gamification in education? What is the specificity of gameplay as a learning experience for non-game activities?
Security and fair-use challenges: collaborative systems are vulnerable to malicious behavior from inside and outside; moreover, what counts as "malicious" is often contested - as it is the case with cheating in multiplayer games, or other rule-bending strategies (such as exploiting technical bugs, or relying on collective or automated agency instead of individual agency). How do designers adapt to anticipated challenges, and how do participants adjust locally to suspicious behaviors?
Learning about learning: how can we foster a literacy of computer-supported collaborative learning for students in computer engineering? How can we together become more aware of challenges and opportunities in the design of CSCL solutions?
Methods and techniques in evaluating participants' experiences in CSCL projects: how do we capture satisfaction, richness of interaction, learning on technical and social dimensions, individual and community learning? What are the challenges of observing, measuring, comparing learning processes and outcomes?
Organizing Committee
Workshop Co-Chairs
Stefan Trausan-Matu
Department of Computer Science, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
stefan.trausan at cs.pub.ro
Razvan Rughinis
Department of Computer Science, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
razvan.rughinis at cs.pub.ro
Program Committee Members
Gillian Armitt, University of Manchester, UK
Raja Chiky, ISEP Paris, France
Costin Chiru, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
Philippe Dessus, Universitéierre Mendes France, France
Valentin Gheorghita, Google, Switzerland
Alexandru Iosup, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Ana-Maria Marhan, Institutul de Filosofie si Psihologie al Academiei Romane
Nic. Nistor, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
Corneliu Popeea, Technische Universitaet Muenchen
Vlad Posea, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
Costin Pribeanu, ICI Bucuresti, Romania
Traian Rebedea, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania