Purpose
The use of collaboration as a mechanism for learning is ubiquitous to education and has a long history of documented success, making assessment and evaluation of the collaborative practices that occur in a given educational context critical to the assessment of the effectiveness of the instructional design overall. Group members who contribute, reevaluate, and integrate their own knowledge into a negotiated group knowledge structure forward the development of a shared understanding that is more than the sum of its parts, yet the quality of students' collaborative processes determines the extent to which such social knowledge construction indeed occurs.

Description
Collaborative practices can be evaluated in terms of quantity (e.g., the distribution of posts within of given group), quality (e.g., application of a scoring rubric designed to assess group process) , and overall structure (e.g., diagrams that represent the structure of the content of a group discussion, such as Chinn & Anderson's (1998)⁸ causal networks). Such indices are often examined over time in order, for example, to gauge the extent to which productive group norms emerge. The relationship of various group process characteristics to individual learning outcomes can then be assessed, revealing the extent to which different interactive practices contribute to each member's understanding and development.

Studies focusing on collaborative practices typically focus on either...

• The Agent-in-Setting, where the individual is the unit of analysis and the primary interest is in examining how and what the individual learns from interaction within the collaborative setting, or
• The Group as the Unit of Analysis, where the group is treated as a complex system whose characteristics are of primary interest.

Limitations
Different groups of individuals will yield different outcomes in terms of both group process and individual process. How students are teamed, therefore, requires some consideration. Unfortunately, different cognitive theories suggest different arrangements: while sociocognitive theory, based on the work of Piaget (1970)³⁸, suggests grouping students of like ability, sociocultural theory, based on the work of Vygotsky (1978)⁵⁰, suggests group students of varying ability. Random assignment may be a better option when the instructor is not committed to either theory, yet this strategy too has its drawbacks. When different groups are asked to focus on different course topics or products, student self-selection may be the only grouping method available.

Variations
Self-evaluation and/or peer-evaluation can also be used as primary or supplementary data in such analyses. Though such data are limited since they are based on self-report rather than direct observation, the implementation of such practices within the classroom can be extremely useful in fostering students' metacognitive skills – their ability to monitor their own performance and the performance of their peers during collaboration.

Example Research Studies

• Derry, Gance, Gance, & Schlager (2000)
• Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson (1997)
• Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton (1997)

Additional Resources

• Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL) Conference
• Piaget, J. (1970). The science of education and the psychology of the child. New York: Grossman.³⁸
• Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.⁵⁰