Learning to Collaborate: An Instructional Approach to Promoting Collaborative Problem Solving in Computer-Mediated Settings

Effective collaboration in computer-mediated settings among spatially distributed people is a precondition for success in many new learning and working contexts but it is hard to achieve. We have developed two instructional approaches to improve collaboration in such settings by promoting people's capabilities to collaborate in a fruitful way and furthering their understanding of what characterizes good collaboration. The rationale is that strategies necessary for a good and effective computer-mediated collaboration may be conveyed to people by exposing them to an elaborated worked-out collaboration example (observational learning) or by giving them the opportunity to learn from scripted collaborative problem-solving. An experimental study was conducted that compared learning from observing a worked-out collaboration example with the learning effects of scripted collaborative problem-solving, the effects of unscripted collaborative problem-solving, and a control condition without a learning phase. The experimental design provided clearly separated phases for the instructional treatments (learning phase) and for applying and testing the acquired skills (application phase). Both observing a worked-out collaboration example and collaborating with a script during the learning phase showed positive effects on process and outcome of the second collaboration in the application phase.