Abstract — Collaborative learning is an essential aspect of the learning process but students are often faced with various issues such as unfair workloads assigned between members, not finishing assigned tasks on time, overly passive members who do not pull their own weight and overly active members who do not allow others to contribute. In this paper, we propose an adaptive collaborative learning system that focuses on improving two major aspects in collaborative learning, communication and project management, by providing advanced features as well as adaptive recommendations. By improving the communication and project management in group projects, students can learn more effectively in such collaborative settings which again improves their learning experiences overall. * Keywords—Adaptive Learning Systems, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Collaborative Learning Systems I. INTRODUCTION Collaborative learning can enrich students’ learning experiences by teaching students many important skills such as communication and interpersonal skills [1]. Many researchers agree that collaborative learning is an essential part of the learning process and both beneficial and crucial if it is used properly [2][3]. However, while collaborative learning has many advantages, there are also many problems that can occur which can hinder learning and lead to a rather negative learning experience. For example, there can be times when students become left behind because they are more passive than other members, or there can be members who are too active, making it difficult for others to contribute [4]. Motivation is also an important issue in collaborative learning since when students become unmotivated they tend to not contribute the required amount of work on a timely manner, which again can be demotivating for the other members [5]. In this paper, we propose an adaptive collaborative learning system that addresses some of the most important challenges in collaborative learning, with respect to communication and project management. The proposed system, called Adaptive Collaborative System (ACS), provides learners with an advanced environment, where they can communicate in different ways with their group members, manage their project and tasks, and get personalized recommendations for individual group members and the overall group to enhance the learning experiences, aiming at * Authors acknowledge the support of NSERC, Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (AI-TF), Athabasca University and Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University. facilitating collaborative learning and making it possible for learners to benefit most from collaborative learning. Several other works have been done in the area of adaptive collaborative learning, focusing on different aspects to support the collaborative learning process. For example, several works focus on how groups are built and aim at finding efficient ways to create groups in which learners can have a positive learning experience (e.g., [6],[7]). Another aspect that is frequently addressed by adaptive collaborative learning systems is communication and how communication in groups can be improved (e.g., [8], [9], [10]). For example, Adamson et al. [10] developed a system that uses conversational agents to encourage students to articulate and elaborate their own line of reasoning in online collaborative learning discussions. A few other systems have been developed that focus on supporting students in working together and managing their projects and/or tasks. For example, Sun and Shen’s Teamwork-as-a-service implementation [6] allocates learners to specific tasks based on their learning styles. The system introduced in this paper is different from other related works in one or more of the following aspects: (1) ACS focuses on supporting learners while doing a group project by providing adaptive recommendations with respect to communication and managing the project and its tasks, (2) ACS is domain independent, meaning that it can be used in any course for any group work in a blended or distance learning setting, and (3) ACS is designed to be integrated in any learning management system (LMS). The next two sections of this paper describe how ACS supports communication in collaborative learning settings (in Section II) and how ACS facilitates project management in collaborative settings (Section III). The last section concludes the paper and discusses future work. II. COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT OF ACS Communication is a fundamental aspect of collaborative learning because it is not possible to work on a project with others without any discussion about the project. ACS aims at supporting communication on one hand by providing a rich communication environment to learners within an LMS and on the other hand, by providing adaptive functionalities to monitor students’ communication patterns and provide personal recommendations to students. A. Facilitating Rich Communication ACS provides a rich communication environment that allows members to easily communicate with each other from Jeffrey M. Kurcz a , Ting-Wen Chang b and Sabine Graf a a Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada b Beijing Normal University, China jkurcz@gmail.com, tingwenchang@bnu.edu.cn, sabineg@athabascau.ca Improving Communication and Project Management through an Adaptive Collaborative Learning System* 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies 978-1-4673-7334-0/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICALT.2015.140 61