October 2007 Volume 10 Number 4 - Educational Technology ...

cognition as well as self-regulated learning theory. This is to say that special effort has been put on enhancing and
scaffolding collaborative learning as cognitive, social, and motivated activity.
Structuring and regulating collaborative learning
Earlier research on collaborative learning has pointed out that shared understanding is not easy to achieve (Häkkinen
& Järvelä, 2006; Leinonen, Järvelä & Häkkinen, 2005), and that students face difficulties engaging in learning and
achieving their learning goals in a variety of learning contexts, including technology supported learning
environments (Volet & Järvelä, 2001). In order to favour the emergence of productive interactions and to improve
the quality of learning, different pedagogical models and technology-based regulation tools have been developed to
support collaboration between participants. One way to enhance the process of collaboration, as well as to integrate
individual and group-level perspectives of learning, is to structure learners’ actions with the aid of scaffolding or
scripted cooperation (Fischer, Kollar, Mandl, & Haake, 2007). One of the ideas in this field is to design scripts that
can be defined as “a set of instructions prescribing how students should perform in groups, how they should interact
and collaborate and how they should solve the problem” (Dillenbourg, 2002, p. 63), that can be modified according
to what kind of interaction, learning or outcomes are expected to be achieved. In scripted collaboration participants
are supposed to follow prescriptions and engage in learning tasks.
In addition to scripting as a mechanism to structure collaboration, we suggest that structuring can be enriched with
technology-based regulation tools, which offer an individual and a group of learners opportunities to self-regulate
their collaborative learning processes. Self-regulated learning theory concerns how learners develop learning skills
and use learning skills effectively (Boekaerts, Pintrich & Zeidner, 2000). Self-regulated learners take charge of their
own learning by choosing and setting goals, using individual strategies in order to monitor, regulate and control the
different aspects influencing the learning process and evaluating his or her actions. Eventually, they become less
dependent on others and on the contextual features in a learning situation. Although research into self-regulation has
traditionally focussed on the individual perspective, there is increasing interest in considering the mental activities
that are part of self-regulated learning at the social level, with reference to concepts such as social regulation, coregulation
and shared regulation (McCaslin, 2004).
Järvelä, Volet & Järvenoja (2005) characterize self-regulated learning from three perspectives. Self-regulated
learning focuses on an individual as a regulator of a behavior and refers to the process of becoming a strategic
learner by regulating their cognition, motivation and behavior to optimize learning (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994).
Conceptualizing self-regulated learning as a co-regulation has been influenced by socio-cultural theory and it
emphasizes gradual appropriation of sharing common problems and tasks through interpersonal interaction (Hadwin,
Wosney & Pontin, 2005; McCaslin & Hickey, 2001). The third perspective looks at how the regulation process can
be framed to shared cognition and recent research on collaborative learning, which is in essence the co-construction
of shared understanding (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995). This is collective regulation, where groups develop shared
awareness of goals, progress, and tasks toward co-constructed regulatory processes, thereby sharing regulation
processes as collective processes.
Self-regulated learning theory has been used in our studies as a theoretical framework to develop those learning
activities that give potential to individual and collaborative learning so that it stimulates active minds and
interactions on individual and social levels. There are not yet studies which use mobile technology for supporting
self-regulated learning, but recently there have been specific efforts made by people working on self-regulated
learning theory to find ways to design technology to assist in helping students develop better learning strategies and
regulate their learning process (e.g. Winne et al., 2006).
Previous studies have explored how visualization as a form of regulation tool can be used for supporting individuals’
understanding (Larkin & Simon, 1987) or awareness of each others ideas (Fisher, Bruun, Gräsel, & Mandl, 2002;
Leinonen & Järvelä, 2006). Visualizing individuals’ understanding can create for a group of learners a shared
reference point, which supports focusing on central issues, for example shared or non-shared knowledge in a group’s
interaction (Pea, 1994). Opportunities have been also searched from computer-based regulation tools, which aim to
promote cognitive regulation processes. Learning tools are to promote motivated learning from the point of view of
the individual learner as well as in opening new learning opportunities for social and interactive learning (Azevedo,
2005). This developmental work can be used for compensating weak study and collaboration skills in different
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