Developing Shared Mental Models in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning

In order to adapt to changing learning environments, instructors must be aware of the challenges that virtuality brings to establishing a shared understanding among online learners. Although developing shared mental models is typically a natural part of learning, it requires significant social and task-related interaction among students, which can be difficult in computer based environments in which social presence is lacking. This chapter will briefly discuss research related to the development of shared understanding and explore what instructors can do to address challenges and facilitate the development of shared knowledge in computer supported collaborative learning environments.

Help Me, Help You

Reporting on a nine-year case study of collaborative learning in cross-national and cross-university virtual teams, this chapter calls for what it defines as a triple track approach to the opportunities and challenges of cross-cultural collaborative learning. Such an approach involves the concurrent focus on student, faculty, and administrative roles in developed and developing nations. The authors analyze alternative delivery modes, identify best practices, and highlight critical success factors including trust-building, cross-cultural communication, and collaborative learning champions. Finally, they examine trends such as increasing cross-sector collaboration outside of academe and suggest needed additional research.

Preparing Online Instructors

This chapter discusses methods for supporting the instructor in the development of strong learner-learner interactions. In this chapter, we present a brief overview of the importance of social learning theories and existing research that support learner-learner interaction as an important aspect of learning. Next, we discuss the multiple factors, and their complex interaction on the instructor’s ability to support learner-learner interaction. Additionally, we report and discuss findings from a qualitative study examining the use of an ecological assessment tool to evaluate an online course’s ability to support learner-learner interaction. The chapter concludes with suggestions for improved approaches to faculty development to support learner-learner interaction.

Collaborative vs. Cooperative Learning

A central theme of this chapter is the following: to better understand the role of the teacher within a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment, it is necessary to better conceptualize the CSCL construct. Toward this goal, this chapter will examine similarities and differences between cooperative and collaborative learning. Next, CSCL will be examined in the context of cooperative and collaborative learning, and a brief history of CSCL will be provided. It is argued that there has been a lack of definitional and conceptual clarity among these learning constructs—this has resulted in the conflation between cooperative learning and CSCL, as well as a continued focus on individual learning, as opposed to “group mind”-like constructs. It is hoped that better conceptual clarity about CSCL will provide a renewed understanding of the role of the teacher within a CSCL environment.

Practical Strategies for Assessing the Quality of Collaborative Learner Engagement

Teachers and designers of computer-networked settings increasingly acknowledge that active learner engagement poses unique challenges, especially for instructors weaned on traditional site-based teaching, and that such engagement is essential to the progressive construction of learner knowledge. “Learner engagement” can mean several things: engagement with material, engagement with instructors, and, perhaps most important, peer engagement. Many teachers of computer-networked courses, who are quite diligent about incorporating activities and procedures to promote human interactivity, are confronted with the challenge of assessing the efficacy of their efforts. How do they discern whether the strategies and tactics woven into their “e-settings” are achieving the desired ends? This chapter outlines issues of self-assessment, including ethical questions. It lays out recommendations for self-assessment in a manner that respects student trust and confidentiality, distinguishing the demands of practical self-assessment from scholarly course research. The institutional pressures from which such assessment emerges are also examined.

Gender and Diversity in Collaborative Virtual Teams

Computer supported collaborative learning environments (CSCLEs) is one of the innovative technologies that support online education. Successful design and implementation of such environments demand thorough analysis of many parameters. This chapter studies the impact of diversity in learner-learner interactions in collaborative virtual teams through a social and cultural perspective. Social differences include gender, race, class, or age. Cultural differences refer to matters like how an individual’s cognition, values, beliefs, and study behaviors are influenced by culture. Instructors must take into consideration the factors that influence individuals’ diversity, and invent new ways to implement successful collaboration. This is crucial, especially regarding teams scattered on different countries or even continents. Social and cultural differences influence an individual’s performance in a learning environment. Such differences must be adequately studied by both the educational organization and the instructors in such a way that the learning procedure will become a positive experience for all the members involved.

Collaborative Learning Among Faculty

In higher education today, faculty members are faced with ever-increasing expectations for their teaching, scholarship, and service. Faculty in the 21st century college and university must teach with technology, incorporate student research opportunities into the curriculum, employ active learning strategies while accommodating learners with disabilities, engage in scholarship at the edges of the traditional disciplines, demonstrate multiple forms of scholarship in a professional portfolio, implement classroom and departmental assessment strategies, and provide service to the discipline and community in addition to the college. These complex roles frequently require faculty to collaborate with staff, administrators, students, and peers for the most effective engagement in these new modes of scholarship, service, and teaching. Faculty development professionals are faced with the challenges of supporting faculty in this new environment, and in particular with finding ways to facilitate the sharing, interacting, discussing, questioning, and brainstorming necessary for success in a highly-demanding work environment. Given the time constraints that are endemic in today’s academy, creative solutions that will facilitate collaboration are necessary.

Student Motivation in International Collaboration

This chapter introduces peer reviewing as a form of collaborative online learning, which can be used in higher education. Peer reviewing encourages students to engage in reflective critical evaluation of each other’s work through participation in online discussion with their peers, who may be located anywhere in the world. The advantages of such an activity for students are described, using the experiences from two cases. The chapter highlights the impact that student and tutor motivation has on the successful participation of students in online peer reviewing activities, as well as perceived benefits for students, including acquiring various skills, and development of intercultural awareness. There is a discussion of potential difficulties, such as timing and different expectations, along with challenges for tutors in designing an online peer reviewing activity, culminating in a template that can be used as an aid for tutors to use when planning an online peer reviewing activity.

Development of Online Distributed Training

This chapter discusses considerations and tradeoffs in designing and developing an online teamwork skills training program for geographically distributed instructors and students. The training program is grounded in principles of scenario-based learning, in which operationally realistic scenarios are used to engage students in actively forming links between classroom and real-world applications of key concepts. The chapter focuses on supporting active engagement of learners, and meaningful and thoughtful learner-learner interactions appropriate to the subject matter (Neal & Miller, 2006). We describe lessons learned in the development of a distributed training program that interleaves asynchronous and synchronous training modules (Neal & Miller, 2005) to leverage the advantages of both self-paced and group learning, provide opportunities to practice the teamwork concepts being trained, create social presence, and promote interaction and reflection among the course members.

The Social Psychology of Online Collaborative Learning

Many social psychological phenomena that are found in face-to-face group work are also found in online group work (i.e., collaborative learning). In this chapter, we describe some of these more common phenomena, including social loafing, social categorization, and a variety of cognitive distortions. We also describe the stages that groups go through in order to become fully functioning teams. Because some of these experiences are unpleasant for both the instructor and the student, both faculty and students sometimes resist the use of collaborative learning. Furthermore, because of the anonymous nature of online group work, these negative experiences can be magnified. We therefore make recommendations on how best to respond to and resolve them. We specifically draw on our experiences with Collaborative Online Research and Learning (CORAL) in order to demonstrate these phenomena and recommendations. CORAL is a teaching/learning method that integrates two course topics through assignments. Teams of students at two universities must complete together by utilizing video conferencing and other online tools.