Orchestration Signals in the Classroom: Managing the Jigsaw Collaborative Learning Flow

The orchestration of collaborative learning processes in face-to-face physical settings, such as classrooms, requires teachers to coordinate students indicating them who belong to each group, which collaboration areas are assigned to each group, and how they should distribute the resources or roles within the group. In this paper we present an Orchestration Signal system, composed of wearable Personal Signal devices and an Orchestration Signal manager. Teachers can configure color signals in the manager so that they are transmitted to the wearable devices to indicate different orchestration aspects. In particular, the paper describes how the system has been used to carry out a Jigsaw collaborative learning flow in a classroom where students received signals indicating which documents they should read, in which group they were and in which area of the classroom they were expected to collaborate. The evaluation results show that the proposed system facilitates a dynamic, visual and flexible orchestration.