DESPRO: A method based on roles to provide collaboration analysis support adapted to the participants in CSCL situations

• We propose DESPRO, a method for the semi-automatic adaptive support to roles.
• We have defined taxonomy of participatory CSCL teachers' and students' roles.
• We have characterized these roles as combinations of ranges of SNA indexes.
• The method uses the characterization to identify roles' emergence in an activity.
• We report the findings of a case study that served to validate DESPRO.

Collaboration analysis methods should be adapted to the needs of their users to be more effective. This paper presents DESPRO, a method that guides learning designers and teachers through the steps needed to provide support adapted to the participants in CSCL situations, based on a semi-automatic process of role detection. DESPRO is supported by a structured characterization of participatory roles defined by means of social network analysis metrics, and on a framework that guides the definition of the roles to be identified and supported. This paper describes the method and its application in a case study to identify and provide support to the roles played by the teacher and the students in a university course. The case study shows how the method defines a flexible approach to meet the desired goal of providing support adapted to the needs of different users (i.e., roles) in CSCL settings.