Group Cognition: The Collaborative Locus of Agency in CSCL

Abstract

CSCL faces the challenge of not only designing educational technologies and interventions, but of inventing analytic methodologies and theoretical frameworks appropriate to the unique character of collaborative learning as an interactional group accomplishment. This paper argues that thinking in CSCL settings should be primarily analyzed at the small-group unit of analysis, where contributions coming from individual interpretive perspectives are interwoven into group cognition. The collaborative discourse is the agent of knowledge building that requires computer support and curriculum design. Groups can think; with the help of CSCL in the next decade, they may be able to overcome the limitations of the individual mind.