When Instruction Supports Collaboration, But Does Not Lead to Learning - The Case of Classroom and Small Group Scripts in the CSCL Classroom

Abstract

Typically, instructional guidance for CSCL has two aims, namely to help students (a) collaborate on a higher level and (b) become more proficient in the practices that are facilitated during collaboration. This paper presents an empirical study in which high school students' collaborative online search behavior (as a learning process measure) as well as their online search competence (as individual learning outcome) were targeted by small group collaboration scripts and classroom scripts. Both the small group collaboration script and a plenary-plus-group level classroom script yielded positive effects on online search activities during collaboration. When no or just one scaffold was given, correlations between the quality of collaborative online search activities and individual online search competence (as learning outcome) were positive. When both interventions were combined, however, the correlation disappeared, indicating that although this combination helped students act on a higher level during collaboration, it did not contribute to individual learning.