Improving computer-mediated collaboration: development and empirical evaluation of two instructional support methods

Effective collaboration of spatially distributed people in computer-mediated settings is a precondition for success in many new learning and working contexts, but it is hard to achieve. Two instructional approaches were developed 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: (1) In a “model condition” people were provided with an elaborated worked-out example of a good collaboration. (2) In a “script condition” the collaborating partners were provided with a script guiding them step by step through their collaboration on a first task. The main hypothesis was that the instruction provided by the model and the script would convey strategies necessary for a good and effective computer-mediated collaboration to the people. To test this hypothesis an experimental design was implemented that provided clearly separated phases for the instructional treatments (learning phase) and for applying and testing the acquired skills (application phase). During the application phase the partners collaborated freely on the second task; the quality of the collaborative process, the joint work product, and the results of an individual posttest on knowledge about collaboration were analyzed. <br>An experimental study was conducted that compared the two instructional conditions (model and script) with a third condition in which the partners collaborated freely (without instruction) during both phases, and a fourth (control) condition limited to the application phase. The computer-mediated scenario consisted of a desktop-videoconferencing environment including audio- and video-connection, personal text-editors and a shared text-editor. The collaborative task was the interdisciplinary solution of psychiatric cases with combined psychological and physical pathology. Dyads of advanced medical and psychology students were asked to jointly diagnose the patients described in the cases and to develop a suitable therapy plan making use of their complementary expertise. The study yielded positive effects of both the model and the script condition on process and outcome of the second collaboration in the application phase, and on the knowledge posttest.

Author dc:creator

• Rummel, Nikol

Contributors dc:contributor

• Spada, Hans

• Netzbasierte Kooperation
• Kooperieren lernen
• Kooperationsskript
• ausgearbeitetes Kooperationsbeispiel
• Desktop-Videokonferenzsystem
• computer-mediated collaboration
• learning to collaborate
• cooperation script
• worked-out cooperation example
• desktop videoconference system

Repository record source_url

https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/1427

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:freidok.uni-freiburg.de:1427