Collaborative diagram drawing: a case study on scaffolding self-regulated behaviors

In this paper we present a case study of collaborative diagram drawing involving 36 students in Computer Science. Their task was to collaboratively draw a Use Case Diagram about the scenarios provided at the begin of the experiment. As students of a Software Engineering course, they had a general knowledge of such type of diagrams and related terminology, but they were not experts and had not real and practical experiences in diagram drawing. The tools used were a synchronous collaborative drawing tool integrated with a chat tool to support communication among the participants. Moreover, the experiment has been structured following the ’think, pair, share’ method. The analysis of the collaboration process outlines a twofold result: first, a significant equal participation of all the students and second, an implicit and recurrent self-regulatory behavior employed by the students to create and refine the diagram and to reach agreement about the final result.