Opportunities and Challenges for Adaptive Collaborative Support in Distributed Learning Environments: Evaluating the GLUE! Suite of Tools

Adaptive Collaborative Scripting systems provide learning benefits by adapting leaner scaffolding to the students and their current context. However, their development is still in its infancy and they are not widespread in the Technology Enhanced Learning TEL practice, which often uses VLEs like Moodle and other Web 2.0 tools. In order to assess the feasibility of applying the ACS approach on a larger scale, this paper presents the initial results of a short-term evaluation of the GLUE! suite of tools. The main goal of this specific evaluation process was to identify possible opportunities and ideas on how to design and deploy adaptive Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) activities using widespread VLEs and Web 2.0 tools in order to maximise community acceptance and lower development efforts. The main findings of the evaluation provide incentive to further explore both the impact and the complexity of the design and the deployment of adaptive collaboration scripts.