Motivating Cognitive Elaboration Through a Knowledge Diversity Manipulation During an Online Collaborative Problem-Solving Task

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine how a knowledge diversity manipulation in an online synchronous collaborative dyad affects the frequency of explanations, particularly explanations that involve elaborating on one’s thinking and learning during a problem-solving task. 196 undergraduates were recruited from an all-women’s college to collaboratively solve a complex and ill-structured problem designed as a network design task. Thus, the study examined a cognitive diversity manipulation in a relatively homogeneous population. Effects of this cognitive manipulation were compared to the effects of a more social manipulation, which assigned specific task roles to individual dyad members to facilitate collaboration. Results show dyads with knowledge diversity tend to use more explanations to elaborate than dyads with without knowledge diversity, regardless of the social manipulation.