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This study investigated how students collaborate in a CSCL environment and how this collaboration affects group performance. To answer these questions, the collaborative process of 101 groups of secondary education students when working on a historical inquiry task was analyzed. Our analyses show that group members devote most of their efforts to regulation of task-related activities. For example, by formulating plans or strategies or monitoring task progress. Group members also engaged in social activities often (e.g., disclosing personal information, joking). Less attention was paid to exchange of task-related information (e.g., asking task-related questions) and regulation of social activities (e.g., planning and monitoring the collaboration). Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the interrelationships between the different collaborative activities. This analysis showed that collaborative activities can be grouped in four broad categories: discussion of information, regulation of task-related activities, regulation of social activities, and social activities. These activities were then used to predict group performance using multiple regression analysis. No effect of discussion of information and regulation of task-related activities on group performance were found. Regulation of social activities positively affected group performance, whereas social interaction negatively affected group performance. As in this study no inferences could be made about the causal relation between collaboration and performance, future research should attempt to focus on this relationship, for example by investigating more closely how different individual and group factors affect collaboration and group performance.

This article investigates the conditions under which diagrammatic representations support collaborative argumentation-based learning in a computer environment. Thirty dyads of 15- to 18-year-old students participated in a writing task consisting of 3 phases. Students prepared by constructing a representation (text or diagram) individually. Then they discussed the topic and wrote a text in dyads. They consolidated their knowledge by revising their individual representation. There were 3 conditions: Students could use either (a) the individual texts they wrote, (b) the individual diagrams they constructed, or (c) a diagram that was constructed for them based on the text they wrote. Results showed that students who constructed a diagram themselves explored the topic more than students in the other conditions. We also found differences in the way collaborating dyads used their representations. Dyads who engaged in deep discussion used their representations as a basis for knowledge construction. In contrast, dyads who engaged in only shallow discussion used their representations solely to copy information to their collaborative text. We conclude that diagrammatic representations can improve collaborative learning, but only when they are used in a co-constructive way.

This research investigates the role of representational guidance by comparing the effects of two different representational tools. We used a design with two different groups defined by the type of argumentative diagram students co-constructed while working in a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. The Graphical Debate-tool offered different representational guidance than the Textual Debate-tool. The results show that groups that worked with the Graphical Debate-tool constructed representations of higher quality and wrote essays that were better in terms of grounds quality. Furthermore, working with the Graphical Debate-tool was found to have a positive effect on students' learning as measured by a knowledge post-test. In contrast to our expectations however, there was little difference between the two conditions regarding the online collaboration process. It can be concluded that representational guidance has an impact on group and individual performance and should therefore be taken into account during instructional design.

Many pupils have difficulties with the abstract verbal information in history lessons. In this study we assessed the value of active construction of multimodal representations of historical phenomena. In an experimental study we compared the learning outcomes of pupils who co-constructed textual representations, visual-textual representations, or visual-textual representations integrated in a timeline. 85 pupils in pre-vocational secondary education, aged 12–13, worked in dyads on a series of four history tasks. All pupils took a pre-test, post-test and retention test. Results show that working on visual-textual representations integrated in a timeline leads to higher short-term results than co-constructing textual representations. Dialogue analyses for two dyads working in the condition with visual-textual representations integrated in a timeline indicate that the extent to which pupils verbally integrate textual and visual information differs for the four different tasks.

The general purpose of this research is to discover principles for the design of educational tasks that provoke collaborative argumentation. The specific research question concentrates on the relationship between question asking and argumentation and is examined in three different collaborative learning tasks involving advanced university students. These studies aim at providing criteria for organising educational situations that elicit argumentation during which opinions change and new knowledge is being created, within constraints (course duration, exam criteria, student expectations) set by current higher education. We discuss some factors influencing argumentation (the role of the student, peer, tutor, task, instruction and medium) and specific attention is paid to question asking. Then we report three studies conducted at our educational department. These studies involve comparable students, a similar domain, but differ in many other respects: the mode of communication (oral, typewritten), the presence of the tutor, instruction on argumentation and/or question asking, assigned task goals (competition, consensus), and the type of required outcome. Each study reveals prominence of different types of questions and question generation mechanisms. In addition, the relations found between question asking and argumentation change between studies. In comparing and interpreting these studies, we discuss results in the light of provoking collaborative argumentation in regular academic learning situations.

This article describes experiences of 610 Dutch students and 241 students from other European countries who studied at least three months abroad within the framework of an international exchange program. The Dutch students went to a university in another European country and the foreign students went to a Dutch university. By means of a questionnaire students' perceptions of three main characteristics of the university learning environment were measured concerning the home university, the host university and the ideal learning environment. The students were also asked about their way of learning at the home university and at the host university, in particular about the extent of constructive learning and reproductive learning. Evidence was found for the influence of aspects of the learning environment on the two learning approaches; e.g., a learning environment characterized as student-oriented discourages reproductive learning and promotes constructive learning, especially when conceptual and epistemological relations within the learning domain are stressed. The learning environment preferences of the students were partly related to their learning orientations at the home university, but they were strikingly similar for students from different countries. There was a strong preference for those learning environment aspects that promote constructive learning. (HRK/text adopted).

The study examined how features of student interaction, and the way an individual student contributes to that interaction (his or her participation), relates to the improvement of conceptual understanding within the domain of physics. The study also investigated how textbooks are used during collaborative work and how that use affects the quality of student interaction and outcomes. The participants were 56 students aged 15 or 16. The students worked in dyads on a concept-mapping task that functioned as an introduction for a new course about electricity. A condition in which the students were provided with 2 textbooks was compared with a condition without the availability of textbooks. The use of textbooks had a negative influence on the amount of elaboration and coconstruction in the student interaction. Individual learning outcomes were positively related to the amount of collaborative elaboration in the student interaction.

Reports results from an experiment in which interaction processes and learning outcomes of dyads working on different cooperative tasks within the domain of electricity were compared; a concept mapping task was compared with a poster task. Subjects were 40 students ages 16-17 years old. Students working on a concept map talked more intensively about concepts than students working on a poster. (AEF)