Catalyzing Collaborative Learning: How Automated Task Distribution May Prompt Students to Collaborate

Collaborative learning must prompt collaborative behavior among students. Once initiated, collaboration then must facilitate awareness between students of each other's activities and knowledge. Collaborative scripts provide explicit framework and guidance for roles and activities within student interactions, and are one method of fulfilling the requisites for collaborative learning. Such explicit framework is intrusive and replicates the one-way flow of knowledge, from instructor to students, that is characteristic of standard learning methods. Parallels between traditional and non-traditional learning environments demonstrate that non-traditional learning environments, such as workplaces or peer-to-peer communities, often utilize equally proactive but less intrusive methods for initiating and guiding collaboration. Open source communities have used automated task distribution systems that will notify users of changes in the status of shared knowledge objects. Theory and research suggest that awareness of shared knowledge prompts individuals to adopt group roles and share their own knowledge. The author suggests that automated task distribution may be equally applicable to traditional learning environments, especially those environments utilizing computer-supported collaborative learning.