Design of communication tools for an educational context

Even if asynchronous discussion forums are currently used in education, the underlying research continues focusing more on the improvement of the basic functionalities than to a better awareness of exchanges, interactions and emerging content. This paper explores a new research direction in the design of technology based learning environments: computer based interaction analysis in educational forums. The aim is to contribute in the design of enriched forums’ interfaces allowing alternative representations of posted messages, and to provide support on the awareness of participants’ contributions via multiple and diversified visualisations of interaction analysis indicators, offering a metacognitive assistance to forum participants (students, tutors, moderators), as well as a cognitive assistance to observers of interactions (teachers, researchers, etc.).