Presentation for internal Agder Digital Learning Arena seminar

1. Designing engaging computer-
supported collaborative learning
(CSCL) environments
Aleksandra Lazareva
ADILA seminar
09.03.2015

2. What is CSCL?
• Collaborative learning
– Interactions among peers (explanation,
negotiation/argumentation, mutual regulation)
(Dillenbourg 1999)
– Shared understanding
– Transactivity (Weinberger 2011)
• CSCL
– Knowledge is an interactional achievement (Stahl
2006); students’ active knowledge construction (Alavi
1994)
– Role of technologies

3. Why to study CSCL?
• Better academic achievement
• Development of higher order thinking skills
• Student satisfaction with learning experience
• Enhanced productivity (Resta & Laferrière
2007)

4. Pitfalls and misconceptions
• Social challenges
– “Taking for granted that social interaction will
automatically occur just because technology allows it”
(Kreijns, Kirschner, & Jochems 2003: 340)
– Lack of consideration of the psychological dimension
in the social interaction
• Some misconceptions
– Content delivery to a large amount of students (Stahl,
Koschmann, & Suthers 2006)
– Role of the teacher (Stahl et al. 2006)
– Media effectiveness (Dillenbourg, Järvelä, & Fischer
2009)

5. Collaboration scripts
• How is it possible to trigger productive
interactions among peers (Dillenbourg et al.,
2009)?
• E.g., describing a step-by-step procedure of
performing a task and distributing roles of
individual learners in a CSCL group (Weinberger
2011)
• “Scaffolds that aim to improve collaboration
through structuring the interactive processes
between two or more learning partners” (Kollar,
Fischer, & Hesse 2006: 159)

6. Theoretical foundation
• Adaptive structuration theory (DeSanctis & Poole 1994)
– AST was developed from Giddens’s structuration theory in order “to
address the mutual influence of technology and social processes”
(Jones & Karsten 2008: 141)
– The social structures provided by technologies are described through
the notions of structural features and the spirit of this feature set.
Structural features are all the rules and resources offered by the
system, while the spirit represents the general intent of this
combination of structural features. Together these two represent
structural potential of technology, which encourages groups to
develop certain social structures in their interaction (DeSanctis &
Poole 1994)
– Appropriation is not something which is automatically predetermined
by technologies; on the contrary, people make active choice of how to
use the structures. Faithfully or unfaithfully (DeSanctis & Poole 1994)

7. Theoretical foundation
• Theory of affordances
– Gibson: psychology of perception. From his approach,
living beings including humans, animals, birds, etc.
orient themselves to objects existing in the world
around them in terms of affordances, i.e., in terms of
what actions are possible to do with these objects.
– Affordances of artifacts
– “Functional” - affordances are enabling or
constraining some activity with an object. “Relational”
- affordances of one and the same object can be
different for different actors (Hutchby 2001)

8. My focus
• Environments that enable students collaborate
and provide conditions for effective interactions
(interactions and communication processes that
help students get shared understanding)
– How do individual learners adopt educational
technologies?
– What technology affordances are necessary to enable
and support effective collaborative interactions?
– How is it possible to promote effective collaborative
interactions (e.g., collaboration scripts, online tutors)?

9. Phases
• Two phases
– The first phase: collecting and analyzing data in
the context of the online Development
Management Master’s degree program (UiA).
Observations on Fronter, interviews
– The second phase: designing and implementing a
CSCL environment in the context of an online
course (UiA)

10. Phase I: Development Management
program
• Structural features, spirit and affordances of
the learning management system
• Communication processes on Fronter:
interaction analysis
• Success of Fronter in the Development
Management Master’s degree program
(support by online tutors)

11. Phase II: Implementation of a CSCL
environment
• Building personal learning environments
• Use of collaboration scripts: faithful
appropriation of technological tools by
students
• Internalizing collaboration scripts; «creative»
use of technologies for learning

12. Assessment of CSCL
• Mostly summative
• Assessing
collaborative learning
with grades
• Social loafing, free-
riding, the sucker
effect
• Peer- and self-
assessment,
individual student
portfolios

13. References
• Alavi, M. (1994). Computer-mediated collaborative learning: An empirical evaluation. MIS Quarterly, 18(2), 159–
174.
• DeSanctis, G. & Poole, M. S. (1994). Capturing the complexity in advanced technology use: Adaptive structuration
theory. Organization Science, 5(2), 121–147.
• Dillenbourg, P. (1999). What do you mean by collaborative learning? In P. Dillenbourg (Ed.), Collaborative-learning:
Cognitive and computational approaches (pp. 1–19). Oxford: Elsevier.
• Dillenbourg, P., Järvelä, S., & Fischer, F. (2009). The evolution of research on computer-supported collaborative
learning: From design to orchestration. In N. Balacheff, S. Ludvigsen, T. de Jong, A. Lazonder & S. Barnes (Eds.),
Technology-enhanced learning. Principles and products (pp. 3–19). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Hutchby, I. (2001). Technologies, tests and affordances. Sociology, 35(2), 441–456.
• Jones, M. R. & Karsten, H. (2008). Giddens’s structuration theory and information systems research. MIS Quarterly,
32(1), 127–157.
• Kollar, I., Fischer, F., & Hesse, F. W. (2006). Collaboration scripts – A conceptual analysis. Educational Psychology
Review, 18, 159–185.
• Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P. A., & Jochems, W. (2003). Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-
supported collaborative learning environments: A review of the research. Computers in Human Behavior, 19, 335–
353.
• Resta, P. & Laferrière, T., 2007. Technology in support of collaborative learning. Educational Psychology Review, 19,
65–83.
• Stahl, G. (2006). Group cognition: Computer support for building collaborative knowledge. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Stahl, G., Koschmann, T., & Suthers, D. (2006). Computer-supported collaborative learning: An historical
perspective. In Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 409–426). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
• Weinberger, A. (2011). Principles of transactive computer-supported collaboration scripts. Nordic Journal of Digital
Literacy, 6(3), 189–202.