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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1410152
This article is part of the Research Topic Digital Collaborative Learning in General, Higher, and Business Education View all 8 articles

How Do Different Goals Affect Students’ Internal Collaboration Script Configurations? Results of an Epistemic Network Analysis Study

Provisionally accepted
Tugce Özbek Tugce Özbek *Martin Greisel Martin Greisel Christina Wekerle Christina Wekerle Andreas Gegenfurtner Andreas Gegenfurtner Ingo Kollar Ingo Kollar
  • University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Research has suggested that how learners act in CSCL environments is considerably influenced by their internal collaboration scripts. These scripts are knowledge structures that reside in an individual’s memory and consist of play, scene, scriptlet, and role components. In its “internal script configuration principle”, the Script Theory of Guidance suggests that as learners work in a CSCL environment, these components are dynamically (re-)configured, and that this (re-)configuration is influenced by the goals of the individual learner. However, this principle has not yet been tested empirically. Methods: In this study, upon entering a CSCL environment, we therefore experimentally manipulated the goals that students pursued while learning. In one condition, we induced learning goals while in the other condition, no goals were induced. A total of 233 pre-service teachers collaborated in dyads on the task to analyze an authentic, problematic classroom situation by aid of educational evidence. We measured their internal scripts both at pre-test (i.e., before collaboration and before goal induction) and post-test (i.e., after collaboration and goal induction), focusing on the scriptlet level. Results: Results show that goal induction had no effects on the kinds of scriptlets participants selected during collaboration. However, results from Epistemic Network Analysis show that learning goal induction led to significantly different combinations of scriptlets (especially to more relations between scriptlets that are indicative of pursuing learning goals) than no goal induction. Furthermore, participants from the learning goal induction acquired significantly more knowledge about educational theories and evidence than students from the control condition. Conclusion: This study is among the first to provide direct evidence for the internal script configuration principle and demonstrates the effectiveness of inducing learning goals as a scaffold to support students’ knowledge acquisition processes in CSCL.

    Keywords: computer-supported collaborative learning, Script theory of guidance, achievement goals, epistemic network analysis, higher education

    Received: 31 Mar 2024; Accepted: 21 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Özbek, Greisel, Wekerle, Gegenfurtner and Kollar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tugce Özbek, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.