CSILE was developed by Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1986.   "CSILE  is a program designed to help students achieve learning by providing support for thinking and understanding" (CSILE, n.d.).

This program is fundamentally a hypertext learning environment where students collaborate with each other using a communal database with both text and graphics capabilities. This networked multimedia environment lets students generate "nodes," containing an idea or piece of information relevant to the topic under study.   The software allows all users including students, educators and other experts to collaborate and contribute to a database that hosts the database of knowledge.  CSILE was the first system to provide across the curriculum support for collaborative learning and inquiry (CSILE, n.d.).

Scaffolds  play an important role in the design of this hypertext learning environment.  As student explore the topics of study they are encouraged to use scaffolds that are designed to support and categorize the different stages of their work.  "One of the scaffolds they might choose is 'theory building' which utilizes a scientific method approach of devising a problem, developing theories, posing questions, planning, researching new information from a variety of sources, representing new learning through text and graphics, devising a better theory, etc." ( Tumblin, 1999, p 240).

In 1996, WebSCILE was developed that allowed the database to be accessed through the Internet.  This permitted Web users to access the database, read notes, and to collaborate with others in this forum.
 

CSILE project examples

Book Talk:

Dig Project:

• Assorted CSILE references:
• Demonstration CSILE database:
• Some thoughts about WebQuests:

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