Abstract

There is wide agreement on the importance of scaffolding for student learning. Yet, models of individual and face-to-face scaffolding are not necessarily applicable to educational settings in which a group of learners is pursuing a process of inquiry mediated by technology. The scaffolding needed for such a process may be examined from three perspectives: the organization of activities, the affordances of tools, and process-level guidance. The purpose of the present study was to assess three tutors' contributions to university students' computer-mediated discourse organized as a question-driven inquiry process. In all, 17 students participated in the discourse as part of their studies in a cognitive psychology course. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to investigate critical patterns and possible effects of the tutors' process-level scaffolding. During the process, the more experienced tutors acted as meta-level commentators, whereas the less experienced tutor participated in the inquiry as a co-inquirer who also produced inquiry questions. More elaborate scaffolding to foster students' metacognitive awareness of the inquiry strategies was generally lacking in all three tutors' data. Implications for pedagogical improvement in collaborative, computer-supported educational settings are discussed. (Contains 4 tables.)

Citation

Lakkala, M., Muukkonen, H. & Hakkarainen, K. (2005). Patterns of Scaffolding in Computer-Mediated Collaborative Inquiry. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 13(2), 281-300. Retrieved August 8, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/76018/.

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Keywords

• asynchronous communication
• Cognitive Psychology
• computer mediated communication
• Delivery Systems
• Discourse Analysis
• Foreign Countries
• inquiry
• Instructional Effectiveness
• Scaffolding (Teaching Technique)
• Teacher Role
• tutors
• undergraduate students