Representational scripting effects on group performance

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of a tool designed for supporting the online collaborative performance of learners carrying out complex learning tasks. Appropriate collaborative cognitive activities may be evoked by structuring the whole learning task into phases and providing congruent external representations for each stage (i.e., representational scripting). It was hypothesized that this combination would lead to increased individual learning and better results for the collaborative task. In groups, 47 secondary education students worked on a complex business-economics problem in four experimental conditions, namely one where groups received task-congruent representations for all stages and three where they received one of the representations for all three phases (task-incongruent). The results indicate that groups that received task-congruent representations in a phased order scored higher on the collaborative task, though this did not result in increased individual learning.