Promoting and researching adaptive regulation: New Frontiers for CSCL research

摘要

The last two decades have witnessed significant advances in collaborative learning, and in the range of collaborative tools and technologies available for collaborative work. Recent research has shown that succeeding in collaborative contexts requires the development and refinement of a range of regulatory skills and strategies for generating shared problem spaces, planning, monitoring, evaluating and adapting group processes. In other words, group members must develop skills for regulating themselves (self-regulation), each other (co-regulation), and together (socially shared regulation). Computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments afford opportunities to guide, support, and research regulation. This special issue presents a new generation of CSCL tools and emerging empirical research focused on supporting and examining the role/s of regulation in collaboration. Collectively papers in this special issue: (a) identify specific targets of regulation, (b) introduce tools and technologies for supporting and researching regulation, (c) present empirical findings to show how regulation emerges or influences collaboration, and (d) identify and discuss conditions under which regulation emerges (or does not emerge).