Fostering Interdisciplinary Knowledge Construction in Computer-Assisted Collaborative Concept Mapping

Research on individual and group cognition has argued that the way learning activities are sequenced over different social levels has an effect on learning effectiveness. This study investigates the effect of embedding an individual preparation phase prior to collaborative concept mapping (CCM) on the epistemic and social dimension of the CCM process. Using a quasi-experimental design, a multi-disciplinary group of 24 3rd year bachelor students attending a minor entrepreneurship are put into two different conditions: one with individual preparation phase (WIP) and one without individual preparation phase (WOIP). The students worked on a collaborative assignment about macro trends analysis using computer-assisted CCM. For the epistemic dimension, students in the WIP condition showed more occurrences of utterances seeking clarification and positioning one’s perspectives. In the social mode of knowledge construction, students in the WIP condition displayed more conflict-oriented and integrated consensus building statements to negotiate shared knowledge. We discussed these findings against the background of literature on negotiating common grounds and converging at shared knowledge with a focus on the epistemic dimension and social modes of knowledge co-construction in computer-assisted collaborative learning.