This revised edition looks at how computers facilitate learning among groups of individuals. Taking account of the impact of the Internet and web-based learning, the text is aimed at those in the open and distance learning, education and training fields.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Cooperative learning is widely endorsed as a pedagogical practice that promotes student learning. Recently, the research focus has moved to the role of teachers’ discourse during cooperative learning and its effects on the quality of group discussions and the learning achieved. However, although the benefits of cooperative learning are well documented, implementing this pedagogical practice in classrooms is a challenge that many teachers have difficulties accomplishing. Difficulties may occur because teachers often do not have a clear understanding of the basic tenets of cooperative learning and the research and theoretical perspectives that have informed this practice and how they translate into practical applications that can be used in their classrooms. In effect, what do teachers need to do to affect the benefits widely documented in research? A reluctance to embrace cooperative learning may also be due to the challenge it poses to teachers’ control of the learning process, the demands it places on classroom organisational changes, and the personal commitments teachers need to make to sustain their efforts. Moreover, a lack of understanding of the key role teachers need to play in embedding cooperative learning into the curricula to foster open communication and engagement among teachers and students, promote cooperative investigation and problem-solving, and provide students with emotionally and intellectually stimulating learning environments may be another contributing factor. The Teacher's Role in Implementing Cooperative Learning in the Classroom provides readers with a comprehensive overview of these issues with clear guidelines on how teachers can embed cooperative learning into their classroom curricula to obtain the benefits widely attributed to this pedagogical practice. It does so by using language that is appropriate for both novice and experienced educators. The volume provides: an overview of the major research and theoretical perspectives that underpin the development of cooperative learning pedagogy; outlines how specific small group experiences can promote thinking and learning; discusses the key role teachers play in promoting student discourse; and, demonstrates how interaction style among students and teachers is crucial in facilitating discussion and learning. The collection of chapters includes many practical illustrations, drawn from the contributors’ own research of how teachers can use cooperative learning pedagogy to facilitate thinking and learning among students across different educational settings.

This book is an edited volume of case studies exploring the uptake and use of computer supported collaborative learning in work settings. This book fills a significant gap in the literature. A number of existing works provide empirical research on collaborative work practices (Lave & Wenger, 1987; Davenport, 2005), the sharing of information at work (Brown & Duguid, 2000), and the development of communities of practice in workplace settings (Wenger, 1998). Others examine the munificent variation of information and communication technology use in the work place, including studies of informal social networks, formal information distribution and other socio-technical combinations found in work settings (Gibson & Cohen, 2003). Another significant thread of prior work is focused on computer supported collaborative learning, much of it investigating the application of computer support for learning in the context of traditional educational institutions, like public schools, private schools, colleges and tutoring organizations. Exciting new theories of how knowledge is constructed by groups (Stahl, 2006), how teachers contribute to collaborative learning (reference to another book in the series) and the application of socio-technical scripts for learning is explicated in book length works on CSCL. Book length empirical work on CSCW is widespread, and CSCL book length works are beginning to emerge with greater frequency. We distinguish CSCL at Work from prior books written under the aegis of training and development, or human resources more broadly. The book aims to fill a void between existing works in CSCW and CSCL, and will open with a chapter characterizing the emerging application of collaborative learning theories and practices to workplace learning. CSCL and CSCW research each make distinct and important contributions to the construction of collaborative workplace learning.

Over the past century, educational psychologists and researchers have posited many theories to explain how individuals learn, i.e. how they acquire, organize and deploy knowledge and skills. The 20th century can be considered the century of psychology on learning and related fields of interest (such as motivation, cognition, metacognition etc.) and it is fascinating to see the various mainstreams of learning, remembered and forgotten over the 20th century and note that basic assumptions of early theories survived several paradigm shifts of psychology and epistemology. Beyond folk psychology and its naïve theories of learning, psychological learning theories can be grouped into some basic categories, such as behaviorist learning theories, connectionist learning theories, cognitive learning theories, constructivist learning theories, and social learning theories. Learning theories are not limited to psychology and related fields of interest but rather we can find the topic of learning in various disciplines, such as philosophy and epistemology, education, information science, biology, and – as a result of the emergence of computer technologies – especially also in the field of computer sciences and artificial intelligence. As a consequence, machine learning struck a chord in the 1980s and became an important field of the learning sciences in general. As the learning sciences became more specialized and complex, the various fields of interest were widely spread and separated from each other; as a consequence, even presently, there is no comprehensive overview of the sciences of learning or the central theoretical concepts and vocabulary on which researchers rely. The Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning provides an up-to-date, broad and authoritative coverage of the specific terms mostly used in the sciences of learning and its related fields, including relevant areas of instruction, pedagogy, cognitive sciences, and especially machine learning and knowledge engineering. This modern compendium will be an indispensable source of information for scientists, educators, engineers, and technical staff active in all fields of learning. More specifically, the Encyclopedia provides fast access to the most relevant theoretical terms provides up-to-date, broad and authoritative coverage of the most important theories within the various fields of the learning sciences and adjacent sciences and communication technologies; supplies clear and precise explanations of the theoretical terms, cross-references to related entries and up-to-date references to important research and publications. The Encyclopedia also contains biographical entries of individuals who have substantially contributed to the sciences of learning; the entries are written by a distinguished panel of researchers in the various fields of the learning sciences.