Intellectual amplification through reflection and didactic change in distributed collaborative learning

• Authors: Elsebeth K. Sorensen
• Venue: CSCL '99 Proceedings of the 1999 conference on Computer support for collaborative learning
• Year: 1999

The agreed educational expectation to Distributed CSCL is the establishment of flexible, collaborative and interactive learning processes of good quality (Kaye, 1994). Achieving peer interaction in distributed CSCL, however, has so far proven to be a mixed and ambiguous affair (Fjuk, 1998; Sorensen, 1997b & 1998).Within Distributed CSCL-research it is generally acknowledged, that new insights into the communicative learning conditions of the virtual environments, together with new didactic methods, have to be developed (Koschmann, 1996; Pea, 1994). Moreover, much research points to human interaction and communication as the key elements to unlocking the interactive learning potential of distributed CSCL (Dillenbourgh et al., 1995). In other words, we need more stringent analytical approaches, which relate the communicative qualities of the virtual context, to qualities of the learning process.This paper compares the problem of stimulating online interaction to the lack of understanding among designers and instructors of the specific dialogical conditions of virtual environments. It discusses, from the perspective of the learning principles of Gregory Bateson (1973), in what sense the specific dialogical conditions and qualities of virtual environments may support learning. It also deals with the challenge of how - under different dialogical conditions - to understand the need for didactic and instructional change in order to enhance interaction and intellectual amplification in asynchronous distributed CSCL.