The design, implementation, and evaluation of an environmental-based cscl task with 5th and 6th graders

Abstract

The present paper aims to report on the progressive design, development, and evaluation of an environmentalbased computer supported collaborative learning task for upper primary school students. In the first section of the paper the significance of appropriate tasks for successful computer-supported collaborative learning is highlighted. In the second section the rationale for the selection of an environmental education task is explained. The method used for the development of the CSCL task is laid out in the third section. The fourth section details the three consecutive, year-long design experiments which were conducted for the refinement the CSCL task. 352 5th and 6th grade students from Greece and Cyprus participated in the experiments in which the authors functioned both as teachers and researchers. The results suggest that the scripting of communication might be more conducive to the quality of electronic discussions compared to the nature of the task employed.