Anchoring discussions in lecture: an approach to collaboratively extending classroom digital media

Collaborative environments typically provide a medium for realizing or capturing discussion. While valuable, the discussion is often decontextualized from the situation in which it makes sense. Anchored collaboration environments provide a mechanism for connecting collaboration to digital media content, such as Web-based syllabi and assignment descriptions. The most significant learning context in most classes is still the face-to-face whole class lecture or discussion. The Classroom 2000 project at Georgia Tech is capturing classroom experiences in multiple media: audio, video, presenter's slides, presenter's whiteboard markings, and students' notes. By connecting the Classroom 2000 captured lectures to a persistent collaboration space, we provide (a) a mechanism for asynchronous collaboration that is anchored in class contexts and (b) a means for treating class activity as persistent learning medium for later comment and collaborative extension. This paper describes a pilot study to create a collaborative discussion space anchored in captured classroom lectures.