The ACT tool aims to guide and support students appropriately during their synchronous communication in collaborative learning settings. The tool supports the following features:
Implementation of the dialogue through alternative means: ACT supports both the free and the structured form of dialogue; the structured dialogue is implemented either through sentence openers or communicative acts.
Adapting the communication with respect to the collaborative learning setting: Taking into account that the learning task addresses specific learning outcomes that require the use of different skills, adaptation is considered in terms of providing the appropriate communication means to develop the desired skills with respect to the learning activity. The adaptation is realized at two levels (i) at the level of proposing the form of dialogue and the sentence types that are considered more appropriate with respect to the underlying learning setting, and (ii) at the level of providing the most suitable set of sentence types in case of structured dialogue.
Personalizing the Communication: ACT enables students to negotiate on the form of dialogue and the SST type they prefer to use.
Framework for self-regulation: ACT proposes a framework for the diagnosis and the evaluation of the collaborative behaviour of students both at the cognitive and social level. feedback is provided at awareness, metacognitive and guiding level in textual and graphical form in order to cover the diverse students’ needs, abilities and preferences.