COLP: Scaffolding Children's Online Long-term Collaborative Learning

TL;DR

This study introduces COLP, a 16-week online collaborative learning program for primary school children, demonstrating its effectiveness in engaging children in teamwork and highlighting the role of parents in supporting online collaboration.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel long-term online collaborative learning intervention specifically designed for children, supported by empirical data from a large-scale study across China.

Findings

Over one-third of children engaged in teamwork after the program

Parents play multiple roles in facilitating children's collaborative skills

The program offers insights for designing children's online collaborative learning environments

Abstract

Online collaborative learning and working are important for everyone including children. However, children still face a lot of difficulties communicating and working together while online, which keeps them from engaging in long-term project-based teamwork. We aim to investigate online long-term collaborative learning opportunities to address this gap. We design COLP, an online, 16-week, project-based learning program, as an educational intervention based on multiple learning theories for primary school students. We conducted this program with 67 primary school students ages 8-13, across more than five provinces of China. We found that this program could engage more than one-third of children in teamwork after long-term study. Furthermore, we interview children and their parents to help us understand the communication channel, benefits, and challenges of this program. Interestingly, we discovered that parents play multiple roles in their children's collaborative learning, particularly modeling and guiding the children's collaborative skills. Given the lack of programs designed for children's long-term online collaboration, this study may inspire intervention design in computer-supported collaborative learning communities.