New Frontiers: Regulating Learning in CSCL

Despite intensive research in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) over the last decade, there is relatively little research about how groups and individuals in groups engage, sustain, support, and productively regulate collaborative processes. This article examines the role of regulatory processes in collaborative learning and how CSCL environments can be used for shared regulation of learning. First, we establish the importance of regulation processes and introduce three types of regulation contributing to successful collaboration: self-, co-, and socially shared regulation of learning. Second, we illuminate two strands of seemingly diverse research that lay an important foundation for supporting and researching regulation in CSCL contexts establishing that (a) computer-based pedagogical tools used to successfully support regulation in individual learning contexts can be leveraged for collaborative task contexts, and (b) computer-based tools for supporting collaborative knowledge construction can be leveraged for supporting regulatory processes. Finally, we draw on emerging research in our own programs of research to demonstrate how regulation can be supported and researched in CSCL environments. The article concludes by charting a course for future CSCL research focused on supporting regulated learning in collaborative task contexts.