e-Research, a way of Learning Together?

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to compare the two worlds of science and learning in the perspective to find commonalties that could be used to develop new methods and technologies to better support collaborative and on-line scientific research. In this perspective we claim the existence of a convergence of these two domains and highlight similarities in on-line tools that support such activities. At the same time, we bring attention to the fact that a largely overlooked aspect of existing on-line scientific collaborative research systems, which is instead well represented in learning systems, is communication among partners. To address this issue we build a collaborative on-line software tool that allows to make some interesting early observations. Further on, we report on the introduction of a discourse structuring facility that could be used, on one hand, to ease the use of communication tools and on the other as a boundary object: an artifact that allows to bridge different paradigms and backgrounds.