Method: Inquiry Tasks 1) Subject: History 2) Themes: 'Witchcraft and the Persecution of witches', and 'Christianity during the Roman Empire.' Participants: 310 students
CSCL Environment: Virtual Collaborative Research Institute (VCRI). "Students use VCRI to communicate with each other, access information sources, and co-author texts or essays. While working with VCRI, students share several tools. These tools are designed to support three different activities of the collaborative inquiry process: task-related or cognitive activities, meta-cognitive activities, and social activities (pp. 29)."
Procedure: 1) Three studies with designated instructors with access to student work and available for student feedback and monitoring of student progress and interaction.
Coding of Online Collaboration: 4 scales with related categories (total of 19).
Results: "From this table, it can be seen that some collaborative activities occurred relatively frequently, whereas other activities occurred relatively infrequently. During the inquiry task, groups are very busy regulating task performance. Mostly by planning the task (19.51%) and monitoring task progress (14.03%). Engaging in social activities occurs also frequently. Strikingly, over 20% of all messages are devoted to reaching and maintaining shared understanding. Additionally, 10% of the messages was coded as social support, meaning they were aimed at maintaining a positive group climate (pp. 33)."