Strukturangebote für die gemeinsame Wissenskonstruktion beim kooperativen Lernen

TLDR: In this article, the authors investigate to what extent collaborative knowledge construction can be fostered by providing students with additional content-specific structural support, and they show that the provision of domain specific structural affordances (realized with a computer-based concept mapping tool) improved both processes and products of the coope-ration.

Abstract: The main aim of this empirical study was to investigate to what extent collaborative knowledge construction can be fostered by providing students with additional content-specific structural support. 32 university students of education took part in the study in one of two conditions (domain-specific structural affordances vs. domain-unspecific structural affordances). The learners' task was to analyze case problems of their learning domain by using adequate theoretical concepts. Results show that the provision of domain-specific structural affordances (realized with a computer-based concept mapping tool) improved both processes and products of the coope-ration. Dyads provided with the domain-specific structural affordances referred more often to theoretical concepts and risked more task-related conflicts. With regard to the product of the collaboration two criteria were analyzed: On the one hand, learners of both conditions used theoretical concepts provided in the learning environment equally well. On the other hand, learners with domain-specific structural affordances were more successful in integrating their task-relevant prior knowledge in the jointly constructed solution.