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…

Despite many years of research in CSCL, computers are still scarcely used in classrooms today. One reason for this is that the constraints of the classroom environment are neglected by designers. In this contribution, we present a CSCL environment designed for a classroom usage from the start. The system, called TapaCarp, is based on a tangible…

Computer-supported collaborative learning has an unexploited potential of becoming an effective learning method for pupils with intellectual disabilities. This paper aims at showing how some specific requirements of this target group may be met by structuring a learning situation with the help of "floor control," which restricts the opportunities…

This paper argues for a need to develop methods for examining temporal patterns in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) groups. It advances one such quantitative method--Lag-sequential Analysis (LsA)--and instantiates it in a study of problem-solving interactions of collaborative groups in an online, synchronous environment. LsA…

This paper seeks to contribute new insight to the process of learning during idea generation (i.e., brainstorming) by proposing and evaluating two alternative operationalizations for learning, which we refer to as connection-based learning and multi-perspective learning, during a carefully designed idea-generation task in the earth-sciences…

This paper explores how wikis may be used to support primary education students' collaborative interaction and how such an interaction process can be characterised. The overall aim of this study is to analyse the collaborative processes of students working together in a wiki environment, in order to see how primary students can actively create a…

The relationship between interaction and learning is a central concern of the learning sciences, and analysis of interaction has emerged as a major theme within the current literature on computer-supported collaborative learning. The nature of technology-mediated interaction poses analytic challenges. Interaction may be distributed across actors,…

Although temporality is a key characteristic of the core concepts of CSCL--interaction, communication, learning, knowledge building, technology use--and although CSCL researchers have privileged access to process data, the theoretical constructs and methods employed in research practice frequently neglect to make full use of information relating…

This article takes a renewed look at the concept of "affordance." It points out that the concept is being used within the CSCL community in ways which signify an underlying disagreement concerning the exact ontological nature and epistemological status of an "affordance." Such disagreement, it is argued, is a problem for both design and empirical…

In upper tertiary educational programmes around the world, the new Web-mediated communication practices termed Web 2.0 are introduced as learning activities with the goal of facilitating learning through collaborative knowledge construction. The aim of this paper is to point to discrepancies in the views of learning, knowledge, and the goals of…

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the relations between Carl Bereiter's and Marlene Scardamalia's knowledge-building approach and social practices. It is argued that technology enhances learning through transformed social practices. In order to truly contribute to educational transformation, pedagogical approaches have to be embedded…

This paper aims to better understand the development of students' metacognitive learning processes when participating actively in a CSCL system called KnowCat. To this end, a longitudinal case study was designed, in which 18 university students took part in a 12-month (two semesters) learning project. The students followed an instructional…

The skills of knowledge-creating inquiry are explored as a challenge for higher education. The knowledge-creation approach to learning provides a theoretical tool for addressing them: In addition to the individual and social aspects in regulation of inquiry, the knowledge-creation approach focuses on aspects related to advancing shared objects of…

This study was designed as a confirmatory study of work on "productive failure" (Kapur, "Cognition and Instruction," 26(3), 379-424, 2008). N = 177, 11th-grade science students were randomly assigned to solve either well- or ill-structured problems in a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment without the provision of any…

In an earlier study, we had tested if observing a collaboration model, or alternatively, following a collaboration script could improve students' subsequent collaboration in a computer-mediated setting and promote their knowledge of good collaboration. Both model and script showed positive effects. The current study was designed to further probe…