This volume presents research findings on the use of technology to support learning and reasoning in collaborative contexts. Featuring a variety of theoretical perspectives, ranging from sociocultural to social psychological to information processing views, Collaborative Learning, Reasoning, and Technology includes an international group of authors

Collaborative learning has become an increasingly important part of education, but the research supporting it is distributed across a wide variety of fields. This book aims to integrate this theory and research and to forward our understanding of collaborative learning and its instructional applications.

The information age has enabled unprecedented levels of data to be collected and stored. At the same time, society and organizations have become increasingly complex. Consequently, decisions in many facets have become increasingly complex but have the potential to be better informed. Technologies for Supporting Reasoning Communities and Collaborative Decision Making: Cooperative Approaches includes chapters from diverse fields of enquiry including decision science, political science, argumentation, knowledge management, cognitive psychology and business intelligence. Each chapter illustrates a perspective on group reasoning that ultimately aims to lead to a greater understanding of reasoning communities and inform technological developments.

Although research in collaborative learning has a fairly long history, dating back at least to the early work of Piaget and Vygotsky, it is only recently that workers have begun to apply some of its findings to the design of computer based learning systems. The early generation of the!le systems focused on their potential for supporting individual learning: learning could be self paced; teaching could be adapted to individual learners' needs. This was certainly the promise of the later generation of intelligent tutoring systems. However, this promise has yet to be realised. Not only are there still some very difficult research problems to solve in providing adaptive learning systems, but there are also some very real practical constraints on the widespread take up of individualised computer based instruction. Reseachers soon began to realise that the organisational, cultural and social contexts of the classroom have to be taken into account in designing systems to promote effective learning. Much of the work that goes on in classrooms is collaborative, whether by design or not. Teachers also need to be able to adapt the technology to their varying needs. Developments in technology, such as networking, have also contributed to changes in the way in which computers may be envisaged to support learning. In September 1989, a group of researchers met in Maratea, Italy, for a NATO-sponsored workshop on "Computer supported collaborative . learning". A total of 20 researchers from Europe (Belgium.

This book focuses on how new pedagogical scenarios, task environments and communication tools within Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments can favour collaborative and productive confrontations of ideas, evidence, arguments and explanations, or arguing to learn. The first to assemble the work of internationally renowned scholars, this book will be of interest to researchers in education, psychology, computer science, communication and linguistic studies

Technology-enhanced, collaborative and blended learning settings can promote more effective approaches to teaching, learning and assessment when context, agency and individual characteristics are taken into account. This book presents critical insight into the theoretical and practical progress made towards establishing effective, valid and reliable strategies for using and evaluating such approaches, and the challenges and implications of doing so. Topics explored include technology-enhanced learning and student evaluations; student engagement and the perception of teaching quality; instructional design and assessment strategies; blended network and mobile technologies for enriching learning and for monitoring and assessment; and the motivations of students to engage with evaluation. Contributors examine issues such as the underlying variabilities in student evaluation of teaching; the implications of inherited cultural and pedagogic practices for educators using collaborative and blended learning; and the international empirical progress in research to understand and measure interactions between cognition, successful learning, and individual difference in technology-augmented settings.

The earliest educational software simply transferred print material from the page to the monitor. Since then, the Internet and other digital media have brought students an ever-expanding, low-cost knowledge base and the opportunity to interact with minds around the globe—while running the risk of shortening their attention spans, isolating them from interpersonal contact, and subjecting them to information overload. The New Science of Learning: Cognition, Computers and Collaboration in Education deftly explores the multiple relationships found among these critical elements in students’ increasingly complex and multi-paced educational experience. Starting with instructors’ insights into the cognitive effects of digital media—a diverse range of viewpoints with little consensus—this cutting-edge resource acknowledges the double-edged potential inherent in computer-based education and its role in shaping students’ thinking capabilities. Accordingly, the emphasis is on strategies that maximize the strengths and compensate for the negative aspects of digital learning, including: Group cognition as a foundation for learning Metacognitive control of learning and remembering Higher education course development using open education resources Designing a technology-oriented teacher professional development model Supporting student collaboration with digital video tools Teaching and learning through social annotation practices The New Science of Learning: Cognition, Computers and Collaboration in Education brings emerging challenges and innovative ideas into sharp focus for researchers in educational psychology, instructional design, education technologies, and the learning sciences.