International audience ; The goal of this research is to design and prototype an intelligent collaborative learning environment. Within this environment, we study synchronous interaction among group members (students) working on a problem/project. Students use an Intelligent Collaborative Support System (ICSS) and a shared activity space: the Tulka Whiteboard. Two main interaction spaces have been implemented: a planning-communication space and a production space. Dialogue and negotiation are supported through the ICSS permitting exchange and evaluation of free-text communication messages that are initiated by students choosing sentence openers from a menu. Using the whiteboard, a virtual room is dedicated to a group of students who share documents, annotations on documents, drawing tools, and text tools. Each group is provided a dynamic assessment of their collaborative skills based on a communication skills model. \textcopyright 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.