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Within discursive knowledge construction, students are expected to negotiate within their collaboration as soon as they face opinions, concepts, or meanings differing from their own. Therefore, negotiation has become a central issue of CSCL research. In an experimental field study with 16 groups of 3 individuals each, we examined whether the demand to use technically supported communication (e-negotiation) within an asynchronous and spatially distributed setting has a positive influence on group discussions and knowledge integration. Our results indicate that the implementation of e-negotiation is in fact advantageous, but does not automatically lead to a successful result. Employed intensively, e-negotiation allows group members to emphasize incompatible ideas and therefore offers advantages especially in creative problem-solving processes.
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Carell et al. (2009) studied this question.