ABSTRACT
The Collaboratory Notebook is a computer-supported collaborative learning tool that is now more than 20 years old. The author helped to create the Collaboratory Notebook at Northwestern University as part of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Learning through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) project, a multimillion-dollar effort started in 1992 to explore the potential of wide-area networking technologies to enable project-based science teaching in US high schools. It also distinguished the design from other systems, such as the earlier Computer Support Intentional Learning Environment (CSILE), which was based on the metaphor of a communal classroom database of knowledge. A very successful implementation of problem-based learning took place at the Northwestern University Medical School using the Collaboratory Notebook. A variant of the software, modified using a cultural modeling approach, was also successfully used to support literary response among African-American students.
