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Specific combinations of educational and ICT conditions including computer use may optimise learning processes, particularly for learners at risk. This position paper asks which curricular, instructional, and ICT characteristics can be expected to optimise learning processes and outcomes, and how to best achieve this optimization. A theoretical multilevel framework is developed to specify instructional, learning, and ICT conditions that may transform and optimise both teaching and learning. The empirical part of the paper reports on and analyses a participatory, user-oriented pilot study carried out in Dutch secondary education in the period 1999–2002. The goal was to explore how teachers can develop and practice computer-supported instructional and learning processes that are qualitatively more transparent, more flexible, and more sensitive to differences between learners, than most currently prevalent teaching practices. The pilot also resulted in a multilevel software prototype LINE which was developed to support the instructional management of learners, teachers, and school management. The outcomes of the pilot study are used to specify more transformation conditions which are required within and outside schools to optimise instruction and learning in both qualitative and quantitative ways. Finally, software functions to construct more generalised ‘Diagnostic, Instructional, and Management Systems’ (DIMS) are modelled and discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Teachers and students have established social roles, norms and conventions when they encounter Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) systems in the classroom. Authority, a major force in the classroom, gives certain people, objects, representations or ideas the power to affect thought and behavior and influences communication and interaction. Effective computer-supported collaborative learning requires students and teachers to change how they understand and assign authority. This paper describes two studies in which students'' ideas about authority led them to converge on what they viewed as authoritative representations and styles of representation too early, and the early convergence then hindered their learning. It also describes a third study that illustrates how changes to the CSCL system CAROUSEL (Collaborative Algorithm Representations Of Undergraduates for Self-Enhanced Learning) improved this situation, encouraging students to create representations that were unique, had different styles and emphasized different aspects of algorithms. Based on this research, methods to help students avoid premature convergence during collaborative learning are suggested. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reports two studies into the efficacy of sentence openers to foster online peer-to-peer interaction. Sentence openers are pre-defined ways to start an utterance that are implemented in communication facilities as menu''s or buttons. In the first study, typical opening phrases were derived from naturally occurring online dialogues. The resulting set of sentence openers was implemented in a semi-structured chat tool that allowed students to compose messages in a free-text area or via sentence openers. In the second study, this tool was used to explore the students'' appreciation and unprompted use of sentence openers. Results indicate that students hardly used sentence openers and were skeptical of their usefulness. Because both measures were negatively correlated with students'' prior chat experience, optional use of sentence openers may not be the best way to support students'' online interaction. Based on these findings, alternative ways of using sentence openers are discussed and topics for further research are advanced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]