Effects of CSCL Learning Approach for Students' Knowledge Construction Process in School Based Assessment (SBA) Environment

Literature reports that educational programs tend to favor knowledge conformation rather than knowledge construction, however, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is a powerful pedagogical strategy that encourages students to focus more on their knowledge construction. In this paper, we will discuss on the purpose of this study which is to investigate the potential impact of the characteristics from the CSCL learning approach used in the Collaborative Portfolio Assessment System (CPA) prototype system to assist students' knowledge construction during the process of teaching and learning. The CPA prototype system is an educational learning system develops to help the teachers and students in managing School Based Assessment (SBA) in selected secondary school in Malaysia. This proposed research study will be carried out in four weeks and will involve 30 form one students that enrolled in History class using this CPA prototype system during their learning process. This study incorporated the pre experimental one group pre-test post-test design and the instruments used are questionnaire and performance test. We hope that the finding of this study can assist the teacher about the advantages of CSCL approach for students' knowledge construction as an improvement in teaching methods for teachers and also improve students' learning especially in SBA environment at schools.