Exploration of the cognitive regulatory sub-processes employed by groups characterized by socially shared and other-regulation in a CSCL context

The current study examined how collaborative groups use cognitive regulatory sub-processes within a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) context, and how these sub-processes were enacted differently for groups primarily characterized by their socially shared or other-regulation. Toward that end, the synchronous chat logs from three tasks of two collaborative groups, a socially shared relative to an other-regulation group, were qualitatively analyzed for planning, monitoring, and evaluation processes. Findings indicated that both groups maintained a high quality focus on content monitoring. The pathways for both groups differed, given the jointly coordinated planning and task monitoring of the socially shared group relative to the efficient but fully guided planning and task monitoring for the other-regulated group. Results suggest that content monitoring can play a key role in the high quality joint activity in both groups because of synergy among the cognitive regulatory sub-processes.