Facilitating learning design with software-realized scaffolding for collaboration

A critical aspect of much of engineering is design. Design is most frequently a collaborative activity today, while collaboration is rarely taught in traditional engineering education. We are developing educational technologies to facilitate both doing and leaning about collaboration in engineering design activities. Our software environment, CaMILE (Collaborative and Multimedia Interactive Learning Environment), provides a structure for doing collaborative engineering design that facilitates integrating diverse media and other resources. In addition, CaMILE structures the way students collaborate. The importance of juxtaposing both learning and doing is one of the lessons leaned from our experience. By integrating collaboration with artifacts central to the design activity, we can motivate collaboration and facilitate learning.