Effects of face-to-face versus chat communication on performance in a collaborative inquiry modeling task

  • Authors:

  • Patrick H. M. Sins;Elwin R. Savelsbergh;Wouter R. van Joolingen;Bernadette H. A. M. van Hout-Wolters

  • Affiliations:

  • Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Research Centre Learning in Interaction, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands;Freudenthal Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, University of Utrecht, P.O. Box 80000, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands;Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands;Graduate School of Teaching and Learning, University of Amsterdam, Spinozastraat 55, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Computers & Education
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

In many contemporary collaborative inquiry learning environments, chat is being used as a means for communication. Still, it remains an open issue whether chat communication is an appropriate means to support the deep reasoning process students need to perform in such environments. Purpose of the present study was to compare the impact of chat versus face-to-face communication on performance within a collaborative computer-supported modeling task. 44 Students from 11th-grade pre-university education, working in dyads, were observed during modeling. Dyads communicated either face-to-face or through a chat tool. Students' reasoning during modeling was assessed by analyzing verbal protocols. In addition, we assessed the quality of student-built models. Results show that while model quality scores did not differ across both conditions, students communicating through chat compressed their interactions resulting in less time spent on surface reasoning, whereas students who communicated face-to-face spent significantly more time on surface reasoning.