Abstracts - Earli

and provide specific scaffolds to help students accomplish web-based tasks and develop specificweb strategies. These scaffolds pretend to give support students’ information-seeking activities asthey asked question of interest, searched for information, organised and assessed their findings,and created rich representations of their newly constructed understandings. We designed ayearlong study to investigate the depth and accuracy of 127 secondary students’ contentunderstanding as well as their development of searching and managerial strategies as they utilizedon-line resources to solve instructional tasks. Our research found experimental group studentsperformed statistically better the computer-based activity than control group students. Besides,findings suggested that students were able to develop accurate and in-depth understanding fromWeb information if they could appropriately use search and managerial strategies. This researchlends evidence to questions regarding the value of students engaging in on-line inquiry learning toenhance content understanding and to develop more efficient searching and managerial webinformationstrategies in Secondary Education.Learning and Instruction in a computer supported environment - The power of natural framingAnnika Lantz-Andersson, Göteborg University, SwedenThe aim of this paper is at analyzing how students frame their activity and create meaning, in acomputer-supported learning environment. The research is based on sociocultural assumptions oflearning (Wertsch, 1998; Säljß, 2005) and Goffmans (1974/1986) concept of frames. The setting isan upper secondary school where students work with educational software and the researchquestions addressed is how do students frame their activity and create meaning when they aresolving computer supported problems and how do the students maintain the activity when theyface tasks that are troublesome? The result implicates that students use different agendas formaintaining the activity in the digital environment and they are left in-between frames of themathematical content and the digital design. This could be understood as an ambiguity of framingwhich means that the students could either turn to the natural framing i.e. the drawback has to dowith the educational software or to the social framing i.e. they themselves are playing an activeroll in their understanding of the task. In framing the situation within a natural framework thestudents are able to maintain their social status and their level of attainment in the school context.Thus the digital environment adds further to the complexity and gives yet another dimension forthe students to act within but also offers a way of framing the activity with tasks that aretroublesome beyond their own competence.Supporting collaborative learning by pre-structured external representationsBernhard Ertl, Universität der Bundeswehr Munchen, GermanyHeinz Mandl, Ludwig Maximilian University, GermanyExternal representations can be powerful in supporting learners when they are solving casescollaboratively. They can focus learners on aspects which are particularly important for the solvingof a given task. In this study, we investigate different styles of pre-structuring shared externalrepresentations: collaboration scripts and content schemes. 53 triads of university students wereassigned to four experimental conditions involving the factors collaboration script and contentscheme. Results show that learners benefit particularly from the content scheme. The scheme wasable to focus learners’ collaboration on particular content categories necessary for their tasksolution. Furthermore, learners’ outcomes benefit from the content scheme.– 760 –