Examining the relation between domain-related communication and collaborative inquiry learning

Research suggests that providing others with elaborated explanations is more beneficial for learning than receiving explanations (e.g., Webb, 1989). Applied to chat communication in a collaborative inquiry learning environment, we would expect that in a dyad learners with more domain-related contributions than their partners would learn more. In the paper we develop a method to examine the relation between domain-related chats and learning outcome for intuitive knowledge. We describe how we automatically extract domain-related messages, and score them based on domain-orientedness. The analysis confirms that there is a positive relation between a high score on domain-related chats and the learning improvement as measured by the difference between a post-test and a pre-test on intuitive knowledge.

► Method to separate out individual contributions of a learners in dyads. ► Within dyad chat communication, learner who posts more domain-related messages gains more intuitive knowledge than his partner. ► Students in dyads seem to mirror each other content-wise: if one peer posts more domain-related messages, the other peer is likely to do so as well