The social affordances of computer-supported collaborative learning environments

Field observations report that contemporary computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments do not completely fulfill the expectations of both educators and learners regarding their potential for supporting interactive learning and collaborative knowledge construction. This raises questions amongst educators whether CSCL environments do indeed provide genuine opportunities for learning processes that rely on social interaction. The authors believe that one of the factors that may explain this is the generally accepted assumption that social interaction can be taken for granted. Social interaction in CSCL environments can no more be taken for granted than it can in face-to-face settings. A theoretical framework is presented proposing the support of social interaction by embedding certain properties in the CSCL environment that act as social contextual facilitators relevant for the learner's social interaction. They refer to these properties as social affordances. A group awareness widget (GAW) is a software tool providing the learner with group awareness on the others in different contexts while at the same time enabling the learner to communicate with them. The authors hypothesize that GAWs provoke social affordances and formulate guidelines for designing GAWs.