Orchestrating learning activities on the social and the cognitive level to foster CSCL

CSCL includes a wide range of scenarios that integrate individual and collaborative learning. Scripts have repeatedly proven useful for guiding learners to engage in specific roles and activities in CSCL environments. The effective mechanisms of scripts in stimulating cognitive and collaborative processes, however, are not yet well understood. Moreover, scripts have been shown to be somewhat inflexible to variations in needs across individual learners, specific groups, and classroom constellations. In this symposium, we present research on how scripts impact sociocognitive processes. The symposium additionally focuses on how CSCL environments can be orchestrated through flexible scripts that adapt to meet the special requirements at the classroom, small group, and individual levels. Orchestrating learning activities on the social and the cognitive level to foster CSCL CSCL covers a range of scenarios in which learners both interact with each other supported by technology and engage in phases of individual learning activities, e.g., computer-mediated learners individually access specific resources before communicating through an asynchronous discussion board with each other (Dillenbourg & Fischer, 2006). But learners seem to rarely draw on CSCL’s potential to engage in specific learning activities both on the cognitive and the social level. Hence, CSCL often benefits from socio-cognitive structuring, for example, in the form of scripts that guide learners’ interactions (Fischer, Kollar, Mandl, & Haake, 2007). While scripts generally aim to facilitate specific socio-cognitive learning activities, scripts may have different foci and granularities leading researchers to distinguish between macroand micro-scripts (e.g., Dillenbourg & Jermann, 2007; Kobbe et al., in press). Micro-scripts focus on specific activities of learners and may, for instance, prompt learners to build their arguments in a specific way or instruct students how to collaborate effectively. Macro-scripts rather support the teacher to implement CSCL scenarios within the classroom orchestrating individual and collaborative learning phases (e.g., by suggesting individual preparation before entering discussion). There is some need to better understand how microand macro-scripts can be tuned to orchestrate learning activities on the social and the cognitive level to foster CSCL. First, to understand how and when CSCL should encompass collaborative and individual learning activities, the effects of scripts on processes and outcomes of collaborative and individual computer-supported learning need to be investigated. Second, to understand how scripts should orchestrate learning activities on the social and the cognitive level, macro-scripts should be investigated that guide learners through the different individual and collaborative learning activities. Research Presented To answer these questions, we present studies ranging from hypotheses testing to design study and investigating microand macro-scripts. This symposium first focuses on how scripts can affect cognitive and collaborative processes in integrated learning environments (the studies by Weinberger et al. and Diziol et al.). The Weinberger et al. study indicates that CSCL has additional benefits over individual learning scenarios only when the collaborative learners are supported with a script that facilitates the construction of single arguments. The Diziol et al. study examines the extent to which learners in an individual learning environment that incorporates an intelligent tutoring system benefit from working collaboratively with a script that guides learners through different individual