Evolving shared experience in distributed learning environments

Distributed learning environments such as groupware give two or more users the means for working together remotely on a shared task. This activity is more than the sum of single users working on their own to solve the same task. Although most people will agree about this, there is neither agreement nor much discussion in the literature on how coordination and collaboration skill should be distributed between users and computer tools. We present a new approach that uses a process model adapted from Activity theory to guide our efforts. The model outlines steps towards capturing crystallised experience.