Stahl, Koschmann, & Suthers, 2006

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Contents 1 CSCL within Education 2 The Historical Evolution of CSCL 3 The Interplay of Learning and Technology in CSCL 4 The multi-disciplinarity of CSCL

CSCL within Education

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) seeks to enhance student learning through collaboration and computer support. In a contrasting view of popular belief on computers in the classroom CSCL unifies learners across the world using computer software and applications that offer alternative methods of instruction. CSCL is an evolved improvement to e-learning. With e-learning information is dissemated to many students and processed individually in isolation. Rather than simply reacting to posted materials, CSCL seeks to stimulate and sustain productive student interaction. CSCL emphasizes face to face collaboration.

There is a clear distinction between collaborative and cooperative learning. Cooperative learning involves sub-dividing work among students that is joined together later. In a collaborative model, students work together as members of a group creating meaning and knowledge together. This kind of "social learning" can not be studied using traditional psychological methods, which historically have been focused on the individual. CSCL challenges learning scientists to develop research tools that take into account group learning as well as individual achievement.

E-learning - One of the challenges CSCL was the concept of e-learning, the notion behind e-learning is that classroom content can be digitized and rolled across to large number of students with little support and follow up from teachers. This in turn will create less cost in terms of teacher time, renting a building and commuting. • The arguments against dissemination of information - dissemination of information to students will be equal to providing important resources for them but will be effective in terms of providing motivation and interactivity. • The argument against less teaching time – on-teaching requires just as much time as regular teaching if not longer since teachers have to prepare the materials, post them on-line, they must also provide motivation, guidance and continuous interactions to bring about a sense of social presence. And is therefore more work per student. • The argument against students working and learning collaboratively as supposed to learning in isolation – in CSCL students learn by posting questions, reacting and responding to each others responses and seeing each others progress. To maintain student motivation and productivity, skillful planning, coordination and implementation of curriculum, pedagogy and technology is required. • CSCL and F2F collaboration - Learning does not always have to be at a distance, students can be located in on place using computer simulation of a scientific model. In this case, collaboration focuses on the constriction and exploration of the simulation. Alternatively, students may be searching the we and discussing, debating and gathering information.

The Historical Evolution of CSCL

The beginnings

The author examines three early CSCL projects: The ENFI Project at Gallaudet University, the CSILE project at the University of Toronto and the Fifth Dimension project at UC San Diego. The ENFI project focused on improving composition skills in an early version of what would be called a "chat" room interaction. In this project, students exchanged coversational texts. The CSILE project sought to make scholarly writing more meaningful to students. Participants were asked to collaboratively produce a formal text. The Fifth Dimension project was designed to build students reading and problem solving skills. It was a board game-type project where students progressed though rooms representing specific activities, with the support of more experienced peers and undergraduate students.

From conferences to a global community

• From small workshops, there was a gradual momentum over the years to create larger conferences on CSCL
• The first use of the term "computer-supported collaborative learning was used in 1989
• The first CSCL conference occurred in Indiana University in 1995. From here on, international conferences developed all over the world
• A specialized literature was developed regarding CSCL theory and research
• A book series on CSCL also developed which includes five volumes
• From a small community, CSCL has developed into a global community

From artificial intelligence to collaboration support

Artificial intelligence

• Computer-assisted instruction was a behaviorist approach with a drill and practice methodology. Early educational computer programs presented facts to students in logical sequences. Through drill and practice, the students learned or memorized the facts.
• Intelligent tutoring systems countered the Computer –assisted instruction. These systems approached learning with a Cognitivist philosophy rather than behaviorist. These systems take into account how individual students learn and how they mentally represent knowledge. They’re programmed to identify common errors in students’ responses and then work to correct those errors.

These programs are designed to perform as a human tutor would. Based on student input, they will respond with a set of pre-programmed algorithms.

Collaborative learning

• Using Logo programming language to teach is a constructivist approach where students build knowledge themselves in environments that encourage reasoning through problems. By learning the language of logo, students explore and develop concepts of logic and literal instruction.
• CSCL – i.e. computers bring students together to learn collaboratively in small groups

-Koschman (1996)

From individuals to interacting groups

From mental representations to interactional meaning making There was a shift in thought where a "community" of learners could be a salient teaching approach, versus viewing students as individual learners. Lev Vygotsky looked at student learning: students working by themselves to learn versus a group of students working as a group to learn. Vygotsky maintained that the individual learner has a different learning curve than when working with a group. The ability for a student to perform an action by him or herself versus performing an action with the support of others is referred to as the student's "zone of proximal development". However, he says that one cannot actually measure the learning of the individual when the student was engaged in collaborative learning.

From quantitative comparisons to micro case studies

• Small groups collaborate, discover/make meaning together and make their learning visible in projects all can see. The project results and group interactions are best subjects for case studies on collaborative learning and CSCL design.

• Various media such as spoken word, text, and diagrams are used by participants to show understand of collaboration topics.

• Researchers use collaborative data to analyze data and knowledge obtained by the group members.

• Methodologies such as conversation or video analysis of these group collaborations can be used by researchers to create detailed case studies on the topic of collaboration.

The Interplay of Learning and Technology in CSCL

CSCL focuses on using the group itself as a unit of analysis. The focus is not on what is going on inside the heads of individual learners, but rather what was going on between and among the learners during their interaction. The author states, "The relationship between viewing collaborative learning as a group process versus as an aggregation of individual change is a tension at the heart of CSCL." Yet, this raises the question of how best to study such interactions, qualitatively or with micro cases studies.

Education Researchers believed that learning was purely a psychological wonder. It has three main features: 1. it is experiences, memories and behaviors 2. it is change that happens over time 3. it cannot be directed observed

Social practice theory focuses on making compromises in regards to one’s social identity in a group.

Dialogical theory find learning in conversation and brainstorming.

The goal of CSCL is to “create artifacts, activities a environments that enhance the practice of group meaning making.” The authors argue that design of these “artifacts” should use the unique opportunities provided by technology rather than attempting to replicate support for learning that could be done through other means. Yet in order to do this, more research must be done in order to determine how small groups of learners construct shared meaning using various “artifacts and media.”

CSCL researchers are a community seeking to actively construct, design, and use technology to facilitate meaning making in collaborative groups, rather than focusing on individual learning.

The multi-disciplinarity of CSCL

CSCL has three methodological traditions: experimental, descriptive, and iterative design.

• Experimental- Compares a control group with an intervention with one or more variables involved. Using an analysis of "coding and counting" and statistical data, they draw general conclusions about the effects of the variables on the aggregate.

• Descriptive – Descriptive methodologies are well suited to make quantified claims. They are data-driven and seek to discover patterns in the data rather than imposing theoretical categories. Descriptive methodologies are not well suited to provide quantitative proof that an intervention has an effect. These methodologies can often understand how general practices work.

• Iterative – design oriented researchers investigate interactions among evolving theory and informal observations and stakeholder engagement.

Potential Limitations

The authors do note that there is a "potential limitation of descriptive methodologies." The examples of these limitations are:

• If there is a focus on how individuals accomplish effective learning, it leaves a clear gap on what they failed to accomplish with the learning. The researchers cannot just be searching for successful collaborative and cooperative work; the mistakes must be researched as well to get a thorough understanding and developed methods to tend to those mistakes.

• Data-driven approaches create room for theoretical dialogue but it never applies any of the actual applications. Data is essential but more is needed to conclude on the findings with the research, not just theorize over the issue without any interference.

• Granted and invisible collaborative instances using technology, what does this mean? This means that there might be instances which learning was taking place among the students who are utilizing collaborative or cooperative applications but none of the researchers were able to spot it out. That is the “deepest insight into what is happening” and what we really need to look into, what we overlook.

• Do not overlook any other valuable learning accomplishments when you do find one instance of the interactional occurrence. It might be easy to waive an “off-topic" chat to something invaluable, but that chat is could actually and entirely be “on-topic” to what the specific topic which is being taught is about.