Why You Should Give Your Students Automatic Process Feedback on Their Collaboration: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Lukas Menzel, Sebastian Gombert, Joshua Weidlich, Aron Fink, Andreas Frey, Hendrik Drachsler

Abstract: In Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), students learn in small groups to achieve learning benefits outside what would be possible for individual students. As in other forms of learning, students need feedback on the quality of their work. Still, writing high-quality informative feedback requires time on the part of educators. This makes it less feasible to provide quality feedback at scale. Given the importance of group dynamics in CSCL, quality feedback should also contain information about group processes and discussion quality. Emergent roles provide a natural anchor point for this.