Studying and evaluating real experiences that promote active and collaborative learning is a crucial field in CSCL. Major issues that remain unsolved deal with the merging of qualitative and quantitative methods and data, especially in educational settings that involve both physical and computer-supported collaboration. In this paper we present a methodology that combines traditional sources of data with computer logs, and integrates social network analysis in an overall qualitative evaluation approach. Several computer tools have been developed to assist in this process, integrated with generic software for qualitative analysis. We present the method in the context of an educational and research project that has been going on for three years, to which we have incrementally applied and validated the evaluation design and tools. Our proposal and the presented case study aim at giving an answer to the need of innovative techniques for the study of new forms of interaction emerging in CSCL; at increasing the efficiency of the traditionally demanding qualitative methods, so that they can be used by teachers in curriculum-based experiences; and at the definition of a set of guidelines for bridging different data sources and methodological perspectives.

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In recent years, the research on Dynamic Software Architecture has received an increasing interest. The field is shifting from the description of "static" hierarchical interaction structures to the specification of open, dynamic environments: a capability that has been present in Coordination Models and Languages from the start. In this report Coordination and Dynamic Architectural Description Languages are considered as a whole, and their degrees of dynamism are studied. A taxonomy of existing approaches to the description of dynamic structures (architectures) is presented, stating their different capabilities and limitations. The use of concepts from the field of Computational Reflection (which enable the building of self-modifying systems) is suggested as a way to unify and extend all those approaches. These concepts are joined in a general framework named MARMOL, where meta-levels are made explicit. Architectural interaction is specified by the definition of meta-level connectors, which provide more dynamic and compositional capabilities. To show how this can be used in a language, an ADL named PiLar is briefly sketched, and a very simple example is described, to provide a first glimpse of its dynamic capabilities.

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The use of the UML specification language is very widespread due to some of its features. However, the ever more complex systems of today require modeling methods that allow errors to be detected in the initial phases of development. The use of formal methods make such error detection possible but the learning cost is high. This paper presents a tool which avoids this learning cost, enabling the active behavior of a system expressed in UML to be verified in a completely automatic way by means of formal method techniques. It incorporates an assistant for the verification that acts as a user guide for writing properties so that she/he needs no knowledge of either temporal logic or the form of the specification obtained.