How students take collective responsibility for productive collaboration: an empirical examination of online discourse

ABSTRACT

Collective responsibility matters because it reflects students’ collective efforts and abilities to accomplish successful collaboration. Combining a multi-faceted approach and time-line analysis, this paper aims to examine the emergence and manifestation of collective responsibility in online discourse. Twenty university students participated in online discourse within a supportive online learning environment (Knowledge Forum) while taking a 16-week research methods course. The results reveal developmental dynamics involving social and cognitive aspects of responsibility mapping onto three dimensions: social awareness, complementary contribution, and distributed engagement. Specifically, the students raised social awareness and made complementary contributions progressively in the context of question- and idea-driven collaborative inquiry. Although uneven distributed engagement was found in the responsive interactions, the students could develop cognitive responsibility by changing their involvement throughout the discourse. The present study provides new insight into how the three dimensions of collective responsibility interweave to formulate an integrated force driving productive collaboration, and how individual participatory patterns relate to this developmental process. The study has implications for learning environment designers and educators exploring approaches to incorporating technical and pedagogical adaptive strategies for capturing and fostering collective responsibility during collaboration, to allow them to tap into different levels of uptake.

KEYWORDS:

• CSCL
• online discourse
• productive collaboration
• collective responsibility
• online learning environment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tuya Siqin

Tuya Siqin received her Ph.D. degree in Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong in 2015. She has served at the University of Toronto as a Visiting Fellow. She is now a professor in the Faculty of Education at Chifeng University in China. Her area of study is computer-supported collaborative learning and knowledge building.

Samuel Kai Wah Chu

Samuel Kai Wah Chu is an Associate Professor (Division of Information & Technology Studies) and the Deputy Director (Centre for Information Technology in Education) in the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. His research interests focus on in the areas of inquiry-based learning, Web 2.0 for teaching and learning, and knowledge management.