The Impact of Different Roles on Motivation, Group Cohesion, and Learning Performance in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)

In this paper, the impacts of functional roles on motivation, group cohesion, and learning performance in a CSCL context were investigated. Four fundamental roles were selected: information searcher, explainer, coordinator, and summarizer. A comparison of 123 questionnaires distributed over 31 groups for two conditions, groups with assigned roles (n = 16, N = 64) and groups without assigned roles (n = 15, N = 59) revealed that there were no significant differences in social cohesion and learning performance. However, there were significant differences in motivation and task cohesion between the two groups. The analysis of the groups with assigned roles revealed there were also no significant differences in motivation, group cohesion, and individual learning performance.