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Technology, Knowledge and Learning

, Volume 19, Issue 1–2, pp 147–164 | Cite as

Comparability of Conflict Opportunities in Human-to-Human and Human-to-Agent Online Collaborative Problem Solving

  • Yigal Rosen
Original Research
First Online:

Abstract

Students’ performance in human-to-human and human-to-agent collaborative problem solving assessment task is investigated in this paper. A secondary data analysis of the research reported by Rosen and Tager (2013) was conducted in order to investigate the comparability of the opportunities for conflict situations in human-to-human and human-to-agent settings. The major research question in this study was whether the semi-standardized human-to-human collaboration provides the student with adequate conflict opportunities in which the student can showcase collaborative skills. This is in comparison to the conflict opportunities in a similar standardized human-to-agent setting. While one type of assessment task was explored in this study, the aim of this paper is to offer strategies for evaluating complex collaborative problem solving process data generally. A process analysis of the chats and actions of the students showed that in human-to-agent group the students encounter significantly more conflict situations than in the human-to-human group. However, it was found that students in human-to-human setting were engaged in significantly more situations in which the partner proposed different solutions for a problem. The paper concludes with recommendations for collaborative problem solving assessment development, and proposes further research directions.

Keywords

Collaborative problem solving Collaborative skills Conflict Online assessment 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.PearsonBrooklineUSA

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