Designing Environments for Collaborative E-learning 2 Running head: DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR COLLABORATIVE E-LEARNING Designing Electronic Collaborative Learning Environments

Personal use of this manuscript is permitted. Permission from Springer Verlag must be obtained for any other commercial purpose. This article may not exactly replicate the published version, due to editorial changes and/or formatting and corrections during the final stage of publication. Interested readers are advised to consult the published version which can be found at: to as Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) Environments-tends to focus on surface level characteristics. Educational researchers and designers are busy, for example, determining optimal group size for problem-based education as opposed to project-centered learning. To determine optimal group size, students' collaborative efforts and the results of these efforts are compared for groups of varying size in different educational settings. This approach resembles comparative research on the use of different media in education that was strongly-and we had hoped definitively-criticized by both Clark (1983) and Reeves (1993). Such research focuses on the media used and surface characteristics of the education provided. This surface level approach disavows the fundamental differences between the real determinants of learning and behavior in education and results in learning materials that are unreliable or even mathemathantic. A second problem is that educational institutions tend to apply traditional classroom ideas and pedagogy in non-contiguous collaborative learning environments, assuming that since these environments allow the interaction that we see in the classroom (e.g., chat, real-time meetings, and shared applications) traditional pedagogy can be used. Unfortunately these environments do not support such interactions in the same way that it occurs in face-to-face (i.e., time delay, lack of complete sensory contact, non-availability of off task activities, et cetera). The proximate result is often disgruntled or disappointed students and instructors, motivation that is quickly extinguished, poorly used environments, wasted time and money, and showcase environments that are often not much more than computer assisted page turning. The ultimate result is very similar to the first problem, no learning since the students tend to give up. 4 The solution is as simple as it is elegant, namely attending not only to the technological prerequisites for collaboration (i.e., the technological environment), but also to the educational and social prerequisites for allowing collaboration to occur (i.e., the pedagogy and the social dynamics respectively). The educational part would take care of the first problem, namely choosing the right pedagogy to achieve one's aims and that take the characteristics of the media into account. The social part would enrich the chosen …