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Are They Thinking Differently: A Cross-Cultural Study on the Relationship of Thinking Styles and Emerging Roles in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning

Collaboration has been recognized as an effective way of learning by numerous studies. When collaboration involves students from different cultural backgrounds a question arises: will cultural differences influence the manner in which roles are adopted within collaborative learning? In this study, a correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship between such cultural factors and emerging roles among collaborating students from two universities in different countries (China and USA). The cultural factors that might hypothetically affect their collaboration were approximated to thinking styles using Sternbergi¯s thinking styles inventory, while the roles that the students adopted according to preferences were coded with an adapted coding scheme. The results indicate that there is a significant relationship between studentsi¯ thinking styles and their adopted roles. This implies that cultural factors, exhibited as thinking styles, can help explain the emerging roles that are adopted in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The results can guide teachers in assigning appropriate roles to students with different backgrounds in order to improve the efficiency of collaboration during cross-cultural CSCL.