CSCL - abstract

The following text is a summary of my project. Starting with a definition of the abbreviation CSCL, the paper will briefly present findings in research projects related to CSCL, list ways and tools used for collaborative purposes, and finally the recent attempts to set up standards related to CSCL.

1 What is CSCL?

The abbreviation CSCL stands for 'Computer Supported Collaborative Learning' and denotes a process by which people work together using a computer and various types of software for the purpose of learning. The computer and the software are the tools used for collaboration and the people engaged in collaboration are commonly arranged in groups. The overall purpose of collaboration is to enhance the sharing, creation and dissemination of knowledge among the participants.

The widespread pedagogical interest in CSCL is based on Vygotsky's theories of learning and his notion of 'the zone of proximal development'. In line with his theories, educators have later coined terms as 'constructivist theories of learning'. The two main aspects of these theories are that learning takes place in social settings, and that people learn when interacting with others to create new knowledge.

Although the abbreviation CSCL a few years ago also was used about 'cooperative learning', today most educators use the abbreviation in the sense of 'collaborative learning' because the two terms denote different actvities. In 'cooperation' the members of a group didvide the overall workload between them. Each member does his/her part and submits it as a contribution to the group. If the participants are developing a report, the individual controbutions will make up the final document. Thus, each member is only responsible for his/her contribution. You may also find the same sharing of the workload in 'collaboration', but in the final stage each contribution and the document as a whole are reviewed and elaborated on by each member of the group. Educators discuss where to draw the line between 'cooperation' and 'collaboration' asking "When or where does collaboration start or end in relation to cooperation?" Their question is valid - at least from a theoretical point of view. They've noted time and again that students who are working together do a mix between the two; they work on their own part of the assignment and then switch to discussing with their classmates what they have written. So for all practical purposes, we'll leave that discussion a side. Moreover, such a distinction is outside the scope of this article.

Another abbreviation that has been used almost synonymously with CSCL is CSCW (for 'Computer Supported Cooperative/Collaborative Work'). The distinction between the two abbreviations is found in the use of 'work' versus 'learning'. CSCW is the older of the two, as it was used in a very general sense to cover all types of collaborative efforts whether they took place in a company or in an institution of learning. The past five six years, however, CSCL has replaced CSCW especially when referring to the collaborative activities taking place in schools.
A similar trend is found in Norwegian; the term 'samarbeidslæring' (collaborative learning) has in recent years replaced the more common word 'samarbeid' which may denote 'cooperation' as well as 'collaborative work'. This shift in vocabulary reveals a shift in focus. Due to new theories of learning, especially constructivism, there's now a stronger focus on the differences between the terms 'learning' versus 'teaching'; it's the 'learner' and how he/she learns which is of major interest. Moreover, as a large number of research projects indicate that learning takes place in a social setting, the focus is now on 'collaboration' and the collaborative efforts taking place in a group. When related to computer supported learning environments, the overall interest focuses on how computers and software programmes can be utilized to enhance learning. Although the abbreviation CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) refers to 'communication' mediated by computers, it is sometimes also used synonymously for CSCL. Just to make the confusion regarding these acronyms complete, note also that the acronym CSCW recently is used when referring to 'collaborative writing'.

In the context of this paper, CSCL refers to the collaborative efforts and work that takes place between individuals or groups in an educational situation. The collaborative work may take place within different learning environments ranging from chatgroups and email exchange to large websites and networks. The basic idea here is that it is the joint collaborative efforts between the participants that create and enhance learning and not the learning environment around the collaborative efforts themselves. In a CSCL based learning environment, the students are responsible for one another's learning as well as their own. Expression like 'shared feedback', 'joint thinking', and 'mutual learning' have been used to characterize the main aspects of CSCL.

The acronym CSCL, as it is commonly used today, focuses on the collaborative activities. Collaboration is widely used within companies where the employees often will have to form groups and work jointly to manufacture a prototype or model of a product, for example. In other cases they'll be asked to produce a report, a memo or some other type of document. Similarly, programme developers collaborate when developing software programmes; research teams do the same when they exchange information and views that are to be included in research reports.

CSCL focuses on 'learning' but says very little about the actvities or the medium that may be used to bring about learning. A large number of tools designed to enhance collaboration allow for oral discussions, whereas others allow for written discussions or the production of documents. In a typical classroom setting,however, the students will do a mix of both; they'll alternate between discussing and writing, or experimenting if they're doing chemistry or physics, for example.

In the context of this paper, the acronym CSCL refers to the collaborative efforts that are primarily oriented towards 'writing' as that is in line with one of the main purposes of my project; to see how students by means of collaborative writing can increase their knowledge base, improve their ability of reflective and critical thinking, and refine their language and writing skills.

2 The application of CSCL: Findings and Evidence from Research Projects

The majority of the experiences gained from collaborative learning and collaborative writing is based on research projects carried out in distance learning settings. There have also been similar projects implemented in F2F settings.

The overall impression from reports on the use of CSCL indicates that electronic collaboration offers participants a means to propose, reflect and refine their own ideas as well as those of others. This is particularly valuable in distance education. Reports on the use of CSCL in what's been called 'face-to-face' (commonly shortened to 'F2F' and 'FtoF') settings indicate the same effects.

One of the main problems when evaluating the effectiveness of CSCL is to find the means to be used for evaluation and comparison. Educators seem to have a common idea of what 'learning' is. But how do we evaluate CSCL? and how do we measure 'effectiveness'? and in comparison to what? Projects reports reveal a series of different strategies. In some cases, the scores of students taking part in a CSCL-based learning method have been compared with similar students doing an identical course in a traditonal setting. Exam marks obtained throughout a period of some years by students following a CSCL-based programme have been compared with students following a traditional learning programme. Altogether, the reports state, there's clear 'evidence' that CSCL is more effective than traditional learning methods. According to the reports, this is valid for exam results as well tests undertaken during a semester. However, a few educators have questioned the validity and the reliability of a series of the reports and their conclusions. They question the results saying that the number of students in the experiments is too low to indicate any valid conclusions. Consequently, it remains to be seen if the methods used in the experiments will give similar results if the experiments are carried out on a larger scale.

The use of applications that support CSCL has been looked upon as a 'must' in distance education. The tools provide administrators and teachers with a means to arrange participants in groups and may thereby give them a feeling of belonging to a community with shared interests and goals. Although participants will have different backgrounds and knowledge, their collaboration will disseminate the knowledge of each individual to the other members of the group and create a common knowledge base that they use in solving problems or assignments.

Starr Hiltz and Murray Turoff describe "... what is known about making learning networks effective as a means of teaching and learning...". In their article the authors offer advice and recommendations in this respect, because "The evidence is overwhelming that ALNs tends to be as effective or more effective than traditional modes of course delivery at the university level". The article seems to promote - as the authors say - the effectiveness in asynchronous learning networks (ALNs) and may easily give the misleading impression that an ALN has qualities in itself that enhance learning. Throughout the article, however, it becomes obvious that it's not an ALN as such that should be attributed those qualities, but rather - as the authors say: "Collaborative learning strategies are crucial for online learning to be effective", and "The instructor/facilitator must reconceptualize his or her role as a teacher". And this - I for one - think is the heart of the matter: it's not the tools used for collaboration that create learning, but rather the way the teacher uses them. And to promote collaboration among students, the teacher has a wide variety of tools at her disposal.

2.1 Online Collaboration in 'Face-to-Face'-settings

Computer supported collaborative learning is most commonly used in connection with distance learning; the participants work and communicate from and across locations that are scattered geographically. As this paper primarily deals with CSCL related to educators and learners in educational institutions, the presentation of ways to collaborate is restricted to that scope. In distance learning programmes, the participants meet each other physically only rarely, and their collaborative work is basically that of asking questions and giving answers, exchanging information and news, and developing documents or solutions to assignments either individually or in groups.

Computer assisted collaboration has also been implemented in face-to-face courses (F2F). A 'face-to-face setting' may briefly be said to be the traditional classroom and the activities carried out there. Although reports indicate that there's an added positive effect of using online collaboration also in F2F settings, they are not very specific on how this has been done. Very little is said with regard to the pedagogical issues involved when designing a group assignment, for example. It seems obvious that being able to communicate with classmates and groupmembers when you're off campus is an advantage. In this respect, the telephone is a much more efficient means of communication than an email programme. Using such a programme, however, gives the user more time to reflect on and refine a question, a statement or a suggestion than during a spontaneous talk on the phone. For this reason, there are some obvious benefits using CSCL tools also in F2F settings.

However, what do we know about how students look upon the use of online collaboration in F2F settings? - Do they look upon it as an artificial add-on that merely adds an extra workload to what they already have? - How do teachers incorporate and adjust the online use of CSCL tools into the rest of the activities in the class? - What pedagogical considerations will have to be taken into account when using CSCL tools in this setting? These are some of the questions that will be addressed and answered in my project.

3 Tools and ways to collaborate

Collaboration may take place with and without the use of electronic applications. It's a quite common practice in schools to ask students to sit together in groups to discuss and solve an assignment. In this paper we use the abbreviation CSCL to refer to the use of various electronic tools or software for communication and collaboration. This is sometimes called 'online communication' or 'online collaboration' and is most commonly done either by using email and chat programmes to communicate and share information, by using software that enables them to share documents so as to write comments in a document or edit it, or by using videoconferencing tools for discussion and exchange of views and information.

Collaborative learning supported by electronic tools uses a wide variety of software programmes in a number of environments. As with all computer software, it's the inherent features of the particular programme that set the options and limitations of what a teacher can do with regard to implementing collaborative activities among students.

There's a wide variety of tools used for communication and collaboration. Some of them come as applications integrated in a software package (e.g. Outlook Express in Windows Office). Others are 'stand-alone' tools (e.g. phpBB which is a bulletin board using php as scripting language).

Tools for online communication and collaboration can be cathegorized or described in several ways depending on the criteria used. One way of grouping them is by describing the collaborative activity either as synchronous or as asynchronous. In the first instance, the exchange of information takes place simultaneously; students write their questions and receive answers instantaneously, like in a telephone conversation. In an asynchronous communication, the answer to a question may come a few hours or even days after it was posted. Another way of grouping them is to say whether the applications are 'client based' or 'web based'. In the first group we find systems or software that all the participants in a collaborative group will want to have installed on their machines. The participants will have access to files and documents by means of their webbrowser; they'll be able to see and read the files, but they'll not be able to edit or create new documents on the website. In the latter group we find software that allows access to documents stored in a database; students can access the documents and edit them if permission is granted to do so. They can also create new documents and share them with others for collaborative purposes.

The list below shows the most common groups of tools for communication and collaboration. Within each group there are numerous applications that more or less offer the same functionalities.

Email is probably the most widely used asynchronous tool for communication and exchange of information.

Chat applications are very popular among young students; synchronous and asynchronous.

Discussion boards or Bulletin Boards are very much used in the same way as asynchronous tools for communication.

Videoconferencing; synchronous; not very widely used in educational institutions due to financial costs.

Filesharing systems; synchronous or asynchronous; widely used among software programmers, but not so in educational institutions mainly due to the user interface, security and probably also because of some reluctance among educators to experiment with and use what may be called 'non-standard'-applications.

In 'filesharing' systems, files or documents can be shared and developed by students in two ways: either by writing directly into the document, or by means of annotations that are enchored at certain places in the document. Most commonly, however, the term 'filesharing' merely refers to the uploading or downloading of files that can be accessed - and thereby 'shared' - by other people .

4 The status and impact of CSCL in educational institutions

In spite of the fact that research reports indicate that the use of CSCL is more effective than traditional learning methods with regard to learning as well as exam scores, it seems as if CSCL still have along way to go before it is widely implemented in educational institutions. It seems as if educators are satisfied when they have set up a website for their subject, have included a plan for the semester along with assignments and model answers, and have offered their students the possibility of communicating with them by means of email. This is probably the overall status of what teachers call a 'rich learning environment'; there's the coursebook, the lectures and the website with additional material for the students to study.

There's good reason to ask why the majority of educational institutions haven't come further. This is the more relevant for colleges of higher education where teaching supposedly is to be based on research. There may be several reasons for this sad state of affairs.

Firstly, there have been very few tools that are supportive of CSCL. Developers and vendors of ICTs have focused on applications for 'e-commerce' and not for 'e-learning'. Even developers of LMSs (Learning Management Systems) have not focused on the 'learning' aspect of their programmes and systems. They are good at delivering educational material and have excellent solutions with regard to student registration and tracking. But that's it!

Secondly, one might ask if educators and their institutions are ready and willing to change their pedagogical learning models? It seems as if they sit on the fence waiting for somebody to develop the 'e-learning solutions' that will reduce their workload, make 'teaching' a more pleasant task than it already is, contribute to increased learning among students, and reduce the number of drop-outs and fails. But as they're waiting nothing happens - status quo prevails. Implementing CSCL in educational institutions will have consequences - for the teaching staff in their role as educators, and for their institution in its role as an educational instution. In spite of the fact, that are numerous of projects focussing on the implementation of CSCL, most of these projects are rather modest with regard to their scope, organisation and financing. There are some projects organised by governmental institutions where some colleges and universities network to collaborate and share results. Reports from these projects indicate that implementing CSCL as a learning method will be more expensive than our present traditional teaching methods. The teacher - student ratio will have to be increased, the teachers' workload will increase, and the institution will probably also have to reorganise its use of the teaching staff.

A third reason for the current lack of enthusiasm among educators for CSCL is probably that there are no suitable software available for CSCL. This is only partly true, because there are applications that can be used for such a purpose. Some of these applications are commercial software, others are open source software freely available on the Internet. Still very few teachers - at least in Norway - experiment with these tools. The reason for this may be that the tools do not fully - on a hundred per cent basis - meet the requirements of the educators, that the user interface is not intuitive and easy enough to use, or that they don't see what they can 'win' by using the software.

In spite of this rather sad description of the current situation, some institutions and organisations - national as well as international - have seen the need for solutions that address the requirements of the educators with regard to everything that's implied in the term 'e-learning'. Attempts at developing standards for 'e-learning' material have been going on since the late 1990s based on the use of XHTML and XML.

5 Towards a standard for educational material on the Internet?

5.1 XML (Extensible Mark Up Language)

The Idea Alliance describes XML in this way (quote):

"Extensible Markup Language (XML) describes a class of data objects called XML documents which are stored on computers, and partially describes the behavior of programs that process these objects. XML is a subset or restricted form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language (ISO 8879). The goal of XML is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML.

XML customizes SGML in a number of significant ways.

First, a specific choice of syntax characters was made so that everyone using XML will use the same concrete syntax. For example all start tags must begin with "<" and end with ">".
Second, a new empty-element tag may be used to indicate that this is an empty element and that an end tag is not expected. This new empty-element tag is like a start tag with a slash character just before the closing greater-than angle bracket.
Third, tag omission is not allowed as it is in SGML. This means that each non-empty element will have a both a start tag and an end tag.
Finally XML does not require that a Document Type Definition be present.
XML was developed by the SGML Editorial Board formed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) beginning in 1996. The design goals for XML are:

• XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
• XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
• XML shall be compatible with SGML.
• It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
• The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute minimum, ideally zero.
• XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
• The XML design should be prepared quickly.
• The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
• XML documents shall be easy to create.
• Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.
• Today XML is a W3C Recommendation. This means that XML has been reviewed and approved by the members of the W3C. XML is therefore deemed "stable" and ready for widespread deployment. A Recommendation is the highest level a W3C document can be assigned. XML became a Recommendation on February 10, 1998."

For more information on XML see W3C at http://www.w3.org/ or O'Reilly.com

5.2 SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model)

Digital Concepts Inc. (DCI) describes SCORM like this (quote):

"Can you imagine having to check with someone about the kind of fax machine they owned before faxing something? Without a standard, you wouldn't have the luxury of simply assuming that the fax would transmit successfully. That's essentially what we have had to tolerate with learning content: no assumption of interoperability, and a lot of manual labor to simply make it work. Thankfully, this is quickly changing through the efforts of standards bodies.
The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) defines a Web-based learning "Content Aggregation Model" and "Run-Time Environment" for learning objects. The SCORM is a collection of specifications adapted from multiple sources to provide a comprehensive suite of e-learning capabilities that enable interoperability, accessibility and reusability of Web-based learning content. The work of the ADL initiative to develop the SCORM is also a process to knit together disparate groups and interests. This reference model aims to coordinate emerging-technologies and commercial and/or public implementations.

The SCORM applies current technology developments to a specific content model by producing recommendations for consistent implementations by the vendor community. It is built upon the work of the AICC, IMS, IEEE, ARIADNE and others to create one unified "reference model" of interrelated technical specifications and guidelines designed to meet DoD's high-level requirements for Web-based learning content. The SCORM includes aspects that affect learning management systems and content authoring tool vendors, instructional designers and content developers, training providers and others.

Despite the "alphabet soup" of acronyms, today's standards are having a profound effect on protecting the e-learning buyer's investment.

DCI has entered into an agreement to collaborate with the Advanced Distributed Learning Laboratory, the leading entity for the federal government for creating and disseminating learning objects standards."

Read also what Philip Dodds, the chief architect of the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADLI) says about SCORM in an interview with CommonPlace.

5.3 EML (Educational Modelling Language),

Rob Koper, professor in Educational Technology at the Open University of the Netherlands and one of developers of EML, describes it like this (quote):

"EML could be defined as: "a semantic rich information model and binding, describing the content and process within `units of learning' from a pedagogical perspective." To state it differently: EML is a semantic notation for units of learning to be used in e-learning. The concept of `unit of learning' (also called `unit of study' or `unit of instruction') is central to this case. It is the smallest unit providing learning events for learners, satisfying one or more interrelated learning objectives. This means that a unit of study can not be broken down to its component parts without loosing its semantic and pragmatic meaning and its effectiveness towards the attainment of learning objectives. The unit of study could be considered as a gestalt. In practice you see units of learning in all types, sorts and sizes: a course; a study program; a workshop; a practical; a lesson could all be considered to be a unit of learning. In EML one can develop educational entities, being integral parts of units of learning, such as:

• Instructional design
• Study tasks/learning activities
• Learning objects (tests, learning materials, parts of learning materials, ...)
• Conferencing facilities
• Monitoring and tutoring facilities
• Search facilities
• Workflow facilities

One way of looking at EML is to see it as a means to build up (aggregate) courses from smallerlearning objects and services. It is generally agreed upon that for re-use purposes smaller units thancourses must be identified. This forms the basis for the learning objects discussion and the related specifications like the LOM. However, having a large number of small learning objectives available, doesn't mean that one is able to build courses from these. A course is more than a set of learningobjects. The learning objects have to be structured in one way or another and integrated with learning activities and services (communication facilities, search facilities, monitoring facilities, etc.).The basic way of structuring educational entities into courses is the `instructional design'. An instructional design can be based on explicitly identified pedagogical models/theories, but in practice most of the time these pedagogies are bound to the teachers personal opinions about `good' teaching and learning. For EML it doesn't matter: EML allows to structure the educational entities according to whatever formal or informal pedagogical model."

For more information read his complete article.

It now remains to be seen if these new initiatives in developing a common 'language standard' for e-learning will be able to come up with a solution that also cater for needs with regard to CSCL 'collaboration'. - Or will we again have programmes and software that are excellent as artefacts for the delivery of learning materials, course content distribution and handling, but are unable to make it easy for educators to enhance learning through student collaboration?

We might well raise the question of who sets and defines the elements in a standard: is this done by commercial corporations and interests or by educators? There is reason to believe that the two sides have different interests and that there might be a conflict of interests. - If so, who will win? Reading the descriptions of SCORM and EML, I get the impression that they look upon learning as some sort of activity where the aim is twofold: on the one hand there's the teacher who sees it as her major role to transfer knowledge to her students, and on the other hand there's the student whose task is to acquire the transferred chunks of knowledge for the purpose of reproducing them in tests or examinations (which by the way reminds be of Mr. xxxx, the teacher in Dickens' Hard Times: "Facts. Facts....."). If this is correct, there's no need for new software: there already are programmes and software that can be used for knowledge transfer and there are also tools for developing multiple choice tests, for cloze tests and so forth.

To me it seems that these 'modelling languages' focus on the delivery of knowledge and information. There seems to be very little focus on 'learning' and how we can use technology to enhance learning. If we accept the research results with regard to the effectiveness of using learning strategies that are based on 'collaboration' , we will have to focus on how we create a collaborative environment and choose tools accordingly, tools that can enhance collaborative efforts. It's basically a matter of selecting tools that have the best potential - given certain teaching conditions and teaching strategies - for stimulating collaborative work and learning among learners.

Currently, there are numerous of applications and tools that meet the needs for communication, presentation and exchange of information. There are also tools for online collaboration. What we don't have are tools that combine and integrate communication, information exchange and collaboration in such a way that:

• students' contributions in a discussion when collaboratively doing an assignment can be traced;
• students' suggestions and ideas when editing a paper or report can be traced;
• allows students to ..

References (used in this text):