This study investigated synchronous discourses involving student collaboration in fixed groups during an introductory research methods course's first 8-week phase, and opportunistic collaboration during its second 8-week phase. Twenty-seven Chinese undergraduates participated in online discourse on Knowledge Forum as part of the course. A…

We present an instructional model involving a computer-supported collaborative learning environment, in which students from two conflicting groups collaboratively investigate an event relevant to their past using historical texts. We traced one enactment of the model by a group comprised of two Israeli Jewish and two Israeli Arab students. Our…

CSCL systems which follow the dual-interaction spaces paradigm support the synchronous construction and discussion of shared artifacts by distributed or colocated small groups of learners. The most recent generic dual-interaction space environments, either model based or component based, can be deeply customized by teachers for supporting…

A common challenge in many situations of computer-supported collaborative learning is increasing the willingness of those involved to share their knowledge with other group members. As a prototypical situation of computer-supported information exchange, a shared-database setting was chosen for the current study. This information-exchange situation…

We conducted research within a program serving future mathematics and science teachers. Groups of teachers worked primarily online in an asynchronous discussion environment on a 6-week task in which they applied learning-science ideas acquired from an educational psychology course to design interdisciplinary instructional units. We employed an…

In order to collaborate effectively in group discourse on a topic like mathematical patterns, group participants must organize their activities in ways that share the significance of their utterances, inscriptions, and behaviors. Here, we report the results of a ethnomethodological case study of collaborative math problem-solving activities…

The use and effects of a CSCL-tool are not always predictable from the properties of the tool alone, but depend on how that tool is appropriated. This paper presents the findings from a case study about the appropriation of a graphical shared workspace. When students are presented with a new tool they may encounter competing constraints and…

Per definition, CSCL research deals with the data of individuals nested in groups, and the influence of a specific learning setting on the collaborative process of learning. Most well-established statistical methods are not able to analyze such nested data adequately. This article describes the problems which arise when standard methods are…

This paper describes the development of augmented group awareness tools that take mutual user ratings of their online discussion contributions as input, aggregate these data, and visually feed these data back to the members in real time, thereby informing participants about how the group as a whole perceives their contributions. A specific group…

The authors work as online tutors for a BSc (Hons) physiotherapy programme at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. This paper represents a stage in our developing understanding, over a 3 year period, of the impact of group dynamics on online interaction among physiotherapy students engaged in sharing with their peers their first experiences…