With the proliferation of electronically available information, an additional burden has been placed on the implementors of information gathering (IG) systems. The set of data that represents the best response to a query may be the aggregation of data acquired from distributed, heterogeneous information sources. In such environments, we distinguish between two approaches to the problem of infor...

Most law school mediation courses teach a set of problem-solving skills that are seen as useful in lawyering and that are also taught in other lawyering skills courses. By contrast, some mediation courses present a relatively new approach called “transformative mediation” and teach a different set of skills focused primarily on “interactional support” rather than on problem solving. This Articl...

The purpose of a learner is to make changes in a performance system to do similar tasks more effectively the next time. The meaning of “more effectively” can be only asserted in the context of the learner’s goals. Three types of learning goals can be distinguished in the context of planning systems: domain goals, planning efficiency goals, and plan efficiency or plan quality goals. Most work to...

The dynamics and unpredictability of open environments pose a challenge to agent development. Agents operating in these environments must be able to adapt processing to the available resources and the current problem solving context. The ability to satisfice ubiquitously, in all aspects of agent problem solving, is the key to existing in these environments.

ModellingSpace is an open learning environment, particularly suitable for science education, which permits building of models by collaborating partners in various educational settings. This paper describes the main features of the ModellingSpace environment and in particular issues related with coordination and communication during problem solving. A number of evaluation studies of ModellingSpa...

Collaborative Interaction Analysis involves quantitative and qualitative techniques of coding and interpreting recorded group activities, mostly used by researchers of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). These techniques are usually tedious and necessitate specialized knowledge, so they are not suitable for everyday class practice. A hypothesis investigated in this paper is that s...