Group Formation in Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review

Introduction Collaborative Learning (CL) represents an essential educational approach defined by Dillenbourg as "a situation, in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together" (Dillenbourg, 1999). Henri and Lundgren-Cayrol (2001) consider CL as an active process by which the learner is working on the construction of knowledge, the instructor plays the role of facilitator of learning, and the group participates as a source of information, as a motivator, as a mean of self-help and mutual support, and as a preferred place of interaction for collective construction of knowledge. Many researchers demonstrated how CL is useful for improving the cognitive, psychological, and social development of learners (Dillenbourg, 1999; Zurita et al., 2005). The development of information and communication technologies has led to the emergence of e-learning. It is a kind of learning based principally on the use of computers for constructing and delivering knowledge. Education researchers began then to search how to benefit from this technological evolution to improve the CL pedagogies. As result, since the late 1990s, a new branch of collaborative learning called Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) has emerged. Furthermore, the rapid development of wireless communication and mobile technologies enabled the emergence of a new form of learning termed M-learning. It allows learners through the use of mobile devices (PDAs, tablets, Smartphones, etc.) to learn anytime and anywhere, in formal or informal places. As result, CL has become possible in mobile situations and real world environments. Hence, Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (MCSCL) represents a new paradigm of CL that is growing in use. This reality is confirmed by the big number of established MCSCL projects (Yatani et al., 2004; Zurita et al., 2005; Boticki et al., 2011; Huang et al., 2014). On the other hand, forming effective learning groups represents one of the important factors that determine the efficiency of CL. According to (Dillenbourg, 2002), studies show that three key conditions are required for any successful CL: the task features, the communication media, and the group composition. The importance of learning group formation (LGF) process is confirmed by many researchers in the literature (Huang & Wu, 2011; Webb et al., 1998). Nevertheless, the social, cultural, psychological, and cognitive diversities of learners make the operation of forming suitable learning groups a hard and time-consuming task. Although MCSCL represents a multidisciplinary research field (e.g., psychology, education, computer science), and although the importance of LGF process in succeeding the MCSCL activities, there is until date no effort to analyse the state of research on this topic. Thus, this paper reviews the studies addressing the topic of LGF in MCSCL using a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology. This SLR provides explicit information on what criteria are used for forming learning group, how to manually or automatically collect and use these criteria, how to support the dynamic formation of learning groups, what algorithms are used to form learning groups, and what methods are followed to evaluate the proposed approaches. The paper is organised in four main parts. The first one shows how forming groups in MCSCL is compared to that of traditional environments. The second part describes the research methodology used in this work. Then, the main findings and gaps from this SLR, together with recommendations for further research are presented. Finally, our conclusions are provided. Related research problem One of the important questions raised in this research is whether the LGF approaches addressing the traditional environments are effective for MCSCL. To answer this question, it is important to know if MCSCL can be considered as only an extension of CSCL supported by mobile devices. …