Developing the role concept for computer-supported collaborative learning: An explorative synthesis

Jan Willem Strijbos (1) , Maarten de Laat (2)

1 Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences
2 School of Education and Lifelong Learning

The role concept has attracted a lot of attention as a construct for facilitating and analysing interactions in the context of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). So far much of this research has been carried out in isolation and the focus on roles lacks cohesion. In this article we present a conceptual framework to synthesise the contemporary conceptualisation of roles, by discerning three levels of the role concept: micro (role as task), meso (role as pattern) and macro (role as stance). As a first step to further conceptualise ‘role as a stance’, we present a framework of eight participative stances defined along three dimensions: group size, orientation and effort. The participative stances – Captain, Over-rider, Free-rider, Ghost, Pillar, Generator, Hanger-on and Lurker – were scrutinised on two data sets using qualitative analysis. The stances aim to facilitate meaningful description of student behaviour, stimulate both teacher and student awareness of roles at the macro-level in terms of participative stances, and evaluate or possibly change the participation to collaborative learning on all levels. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756320900137X)

Mots clés: roles; scripting; narratives

Domaines: Environnements Informatiques pour l'Apprentissage Humain; Education

Jan Willem Strijbos, Maarten de Laat. Developing the role concept for computer-supported collaborative learning: An explorative synthesis. Computers in Human Behavior, 2010, 26, pp.495-505. ⟨hal-00703894⟩