Collaboration Scripts for CSCL

Collaboration scripts guide learners’ in their collaboration. The Script Theory of Guidance distinguishes between internal and external collaboration scripts. Internal collaboration scripts are composed of flexible knowledge components that help an individual to understand and engage in interaction with other people. External collaboration scripts are scaffolds that aim at (co-)activating functional internal script components. The script theory of guidance builds on the late work of Roger Schank on dynamic memory but extended it with respect to assumptions on the flexibility of script components and with respect to its instructional consequences. A recent meta-analysis (Vogel et al., 2017) has summarized empirical studies and came to the conclusion that external collaboration scripts do have positive effects on learning. However, the effect is greater for learning to collaborate (e.g., argumentation) than for collaborating to learn, e.g., about evolution in biology. Moreover, external collaboration scripts have better effects when they are combined with content support and target a middle level in the hierarchy of internal script components (i.e., the scene level according). In research on computer-supported collaborative learning collaboration scripts have been a boundary concept linking psychology, science and mathematics education and computer science.