Ubiquitous Collaborative Support (UbiCoS)

A novel multi-platform approach to scaffolding math learning and encouraging student collaboration.

About the Project

This project focused on creating a tool to encourage students to collaborate on different types of digital platforms in the context of a middle school math curriculum. In this project, we created a tool that tied together three types of digital collaboration models, and examined if we could use collaboration to encourage content learning and adapt to students’ unique collaborative styles. 

Why pursue this project?  

Other projects have worked towards supporting collaboration between students in one unique context, succeeding in trying to support students who have collaborated face to face or online. Our project is unique in its attempt to create collaborative support that ties different platforms together, whether face to face or online. 

What are some of the project takeaways?  

This was a proof-of-concept project and at this time, we don’t plan to follow through on creating the rest of this platform, but are coming away from this project with other useful takeaways such as a math curriculum, suggestions for standalone collaborative tools, and takeaways on how, why, and when students give help. 

What can I find on this project’s website? 

On this website, you’ll find a few resources that might be helpful for you. 

If you’re a math teacher, you should want to take a look at our 3-4 week modeling curriculum for middle school math. We also will announce upcoming workshops on our home page. 

If you are any kind of teacher, we’re in the process of writing up findings and compiling a list of digital tools that could be useful to you in facilitating collaboration. You could also take a look at our takeaways for educators

If you’re a researcher doing similar work or potentially working in EdTech, you could find our publications relevant to your work.


Publications

Ahmed, I., Mawasi, A., Wang, S., Wylie, R., Bergner, Y., Whitehurst, A., & Walker, E. (2019, June). Investigating help-giving behavior in a cross-platform learning environment. In International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 14-25). Springer, Cham.

  Get PDF

Ahmed, I., Girotto, V., Mawasi, A., Whitehurst, A., Wylie, R., & Walker, E. (2019). Co-Design for Learner Help-Giving Across Physical and Digital Contexts. International Conference on the Learning Sciences.

  Get PDF

Clark AT, Ahmed I, Metzger S, Walker E, Wylie R. Moving From Co-Design to Co-Research: Engaging Youth Participation in Guided Qualitative Inquiry. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. January 2022. doi:10.1177/16094069221084793

  Get PDF

Mawasi, A., Ahmed, I., Walker, E., Wang, S., Marasli, Z., Whitehurst, A., & Wylie, R. (2020). Using design-based research to improve peer help-giving in a middle school math classroom. International Conference on the Learning Sciences. 

  Get PDF

Team – Contact Us

To contact us, please reach out to: eawalker@pitt.edu

Erin Walker (University of Pittsburgh)
Ruth Wylie (Arizona State University) 

Ishrat Ahmed 

Yoav Bergner

YounJi Grace Choi 

Adam Clark

Chloe Dahan 

Leah M. Friedman

Victor Girotto

Zeynep Marasli

Areej Mawasi

Stephania Metzger

Marilyn Mora

Rifa Vhora 

Shang Wang

Amanda Whitehurst 

Thank you to the middle school teachers and student collaborators who worked on this project with us. 

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1736103 and Grant No. 1912044