Information ecology of collaborations in educational settings: influence of tool

The information ecology perspective [2] helps to understand information spaces in terms of the creation, searching, and use (consumption) of information. An information ecology perspective of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments describes the flow of information into the ecology (who writes notes? how many and when?) and the use of that information (who reads? how many and when?). From that perspective, use of two CSCL tools is compared to note similarities (e.g., notes written per student) and dissimilarities (e.g., thread length).