{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03080872913992298, 'fraction_numerical': 0.016046213093709884, 'mean_word_length': 5.834795321637427, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Effects of Using Multiple Forms of Support to Enhance Students' Collaboration during Concept Mapping

Collaborative learning provides opportunities to facilitate students’ knowledge construction. However, students may face challenges while constructing meaning through dialogue. This study explored multiple forms of support to foster collaboration that would lead to a deeper understanding of science ideas and high-quality group concept maps. Ninety-five students from four 8 grade science classrooms participated in this study. Using a 2 x 2 experimental design, we examined the effect of teacher modeling of prompts and the effect of meaningful individual preparation prior to collaboration on the quality of students’ concept maps. Statistical analyses revealed that groups that prepared individual concept maps and received teacher modeling of prompts generated the highest quality concept maps. Further, teacher modeling of prompts was only found to be effective when combined with the individual preparation of concept maps prior to collaboration. Implications for classroom practice and future research are discussed. Research from collaborative learning in classrooms and Computer Supported Collaborative Learning settings (CSCL) has found that engaging students in collaboration provides opportunities to facilitate their knowledge construction. Students involved in collaboration may learn through generating elaborate questions, explanations, and arguments (e.g., Choi, Land, & Turgeon, 2005; Weinberger, Stegmann, & Fischer, 2006). However, other research reveals that constructing meaning through dialogue often involves challenges. Students may not always interact effectively and may have difficulty extending one another’s ideas and sustaining discussions (So, 2007). Our own prior research has found that students do not always engage in elaborate science conversations in groups (Gnesdilow, Bopardikar, Sullivan, & Puntambekar, 2010). Mercer (2000) has explained that people use their past social and cultural experiences to help them to understand the ways that particular dialogic interactions unfold. Students may not be able to draw from such resources during conversations with each other if their prior school experiences have provided them with little time to talk with peers and has focused more on didactic forms of instruction and discourse. This paper focuses on collaborative concept mapping as a specific context for researching and enhancing students’ collaboration. Concept maps are graphic organizers that represent knowledge by showing relationships between concepts. A concept map includes at least two concepts connected by a linking word which explains the relationships between the concepts (Novak & Cañas, 2008). A collaborative concept map is created when students collectively generate a concept map that may reflect the understanding of the group. Collaborative concept maps may promote social thinking and metacognition among students (Roth & Roychoudhury, 1992), and engage students in elaborate science discussions to co-construct scientific meanings (van Boxtel, van der Linden, Roelofs, & Erkens, 2002; White & Gunstone, as cited in Edmondson, 2000). To facilitate collaborative concept mapping and address the challenges involved in collaborative knowledge construction, there is a need for supporting students’ collaboration. Classroom studies on collaborative learning have provided students with prompts for generating high-level science questions and explanations (Coleman, 1998; King, 1999), and instruction and training to students in various group skills, prior to collaboration (Mercer, 2000). In CSCL settings, studies have utilized software-based tools to help students construct elaborate science explanations (Vattam, Kramer, Kim, & Kolodner, 2007), provided online metacognitive support to promote students’ critical discussions (Choi et al., 2005), and scripts to enhance students’ online discussions (Weinberger et al., 2006). Furthermore, in classroom and CSCL settings, studies have stressed the important role of the teacher in moderating students’ discussions and helping students develop collaboration skills (Mercer, 2000; Schwarz, Asterhan, & Gil, 2009). In this study, we utilized multiple forms of support to facilitate students’ knowledge construction during collaborative concept mapping. We examined how two supports, (i) meaningful individual preparation and (ii) teacher modeling of prompts prior to collaboration, affect the quality of students’ collaborative concept maps. We will explain the forms of support in more detail in the methods section. CSCL 2011 Proceedings Volume I: Long Papers