Revealing the processes of students' interaction with a novel collaborative problem solving task: An in-depth analysis of think-aloud protocols

摘要

Collaborative problem solving (CoIPS) skills are considered crucial to succeed in work, education, and life in a knowledge-rich society. Nevertheless, research on the assessment of CoIPS is at its initial stage; specifically, assessments of synchronous student-student CoIPS in digital environments have been scarcely investigated, and there is an ample need for valid and reliable assessments to measure CoIPS. The present study attempts to fill this gap by proposing a novel CoIPS task and investigating students' CoIPS skills with the help of think-aloud protocols while they were taking an online performance-based test. The task was developed on the basis of a CoIPS framework, and principles emphasized in the research literature on students' interaction, collaboration, and problem solving were implemented. A real-world problem mimicking a common teaching and learning situation formed the context of this task. The empirical evidence obtained from the think-aloud protocols of eleven Norwegian students displayed the strengths and weaknesses of the task, and strengthened the feasibility to assess CoIPS. Implications for the future design of CoIPS tasks are discussed. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.