(90 minutes)

Frank Fischer
Professor of Education and Educational Psychology
Department of Psychology
University of Munich

In this talk I give an overview on a series of empirical studies investigating the relationship of discourse and cognition in differently structured computer-supported collaborative learning environments. A theoretical focus is on scripting, as we consider knowledge construction in groups as partly guided by internal collaboration scripts (individually represented, procedural knowledge on collaboration). External collaboration scripts are scaffolding strategies for guiding groups through complex patterns of interaction when appropriate internal scripts cannot be activated. External scripts specify activities, roles, and assign them to individuals in a group.

A methodological focus of the talk is on new ways to investigate collaborative knowledge construction, like using think-aloud protocols during asynchronous collaboration, methods for the analysis of knowledge convergence, and automatic discourse analyses.

Another focus is on major findings of this research, including the comparison of effects of different external collaboration scripts on processes and outcomes of collaborative knowledge construction to help answering the question how much and what kind of guidance for collaboration is necessary, and how can technologies be designed to implement this guidance.

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Frank Fischer is professor of Education and Educational Psychology at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich, Germany and was formerly professor of Research on Learning and Instruction at the University of Tuebingen and head of the research unit "Collaboration Knowledge Construction" at the Knowledge Media Research Center in Tuebingen. His research revolves around collaborative knowledge construction in interactive learning environments. In recent research projects he focused on facilitating collaborative knowledge construction by means of computer supported socio cognitive scaffolding (e.g., computer based collaboration scripts) in school and university contexts. An important goal of another ongoing research project is to contribute to theory building with respect to the complex interplay between external and internal representations in collaborative learning environments. With respect to methodology, he is interested in contributing to the development of a use�] inspired basic research approach in the field of learning and instruction.

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