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(Robert Barton) A very informative paper Jesse. I'm unfamiliar with the acronym CSCW. In business, I don't believe there is as much emphasis placed on CL when compared to education. Employees are hired for a specific purpose and if working in a team environment, they may get together once a week, sometime once every two weeks. I work as a ID on a team of 12 (SME's and web developers) developing CBT. We may meet once every 2-3 weeks, as per the project manager. Most times, in business, the team knows what is required to accomplish a goal and they act accordingly. In education, the goals may seem unclear at first. They are ultimately satisfied one assignment at a time.

Bob, I didn't realize you were in ISD? I'm sure you told me at one point. I got the CSCL and CSCW terms from an article we read or a web page I came across. Sorry I can't give you the link. I don't think there is a world of difference between the two. If you think of it, both CSCL and CSCW are collaboration... one just is colaboration on WORK tasks (cscW) and the other is collaboration on leanring tasks (cscL).

(Robert Barton) Your comment regarding "conditions" has me curious. I understand your rationale for omitting it, but can you expound a little more on this topic, or possibly provide a link for further reading?

Bob. Think first of the "conditions" that might need to be in place for f2f collaboration to occure. (Social skills, desk arrangements, willing students). When cooperative learning goes online and becomes CSCL, it seems to me that you only ADD conditions that need to be in place for healthy collaboration to be able to occur. You still need willing participants. You still need social skills to be a certain level in the collaborators. You still need activities arranged to envoke collaboration. On top of this, you need tech support, you need time issues to be ironed out, you need software that really supports rather than detracts from collaboration. Going from f2f collaborative learing, to CSCL... only adds more layers. It's not just moving from one type to another such that both experiences are pretty much just as hard or just as easy to pull off.

(Robert Barton) I believe online simultaneous interaction is possible when participating in a synchronous chat. We've conducted a few and have interacted quite well :). Without researching PIES, has Kagan adapted his theory to include distance education?

Bob, I didn't mean to say that "Simultanious Interaction" was not possible online. You are right that it is possible and we have done some of that ourselves already. What I was getting at was that with my old PIES view of collaborative learning, I didn't have a category of asynchronous collaboration online. Kagan's theory was developed in f2f classes. Think of your typical public school room. In that type of environment, you want as many students simultaniously acting as possible. When you go online, via CSCL, and use an asynchronous medium.. then the word simultanious goes out the window. SO... that means that my theory needed to be a bit more flexible. I needed to be able to take the S out of PIES... or be able to stretch the theory to encapsulate asynchronous environments as well.