When I read this, I find it somewhat 'distasteful'. While I agree that it is important that practice will facilitate the students to be competent in the skills instructed, I find it unnecessary and more importantly, wrong to make sure that they are compelled to do so. In fact, I am very skeptical about the effectiveness of if the students need to be compelled into practising the skills. I think the onus is on the instructors to ensure that the students are willing to practice the skills over and over again through measures such as incentives' systems, etc.

I am curious to know how it is determined that Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) will derive a greated total effort of group as compared to face-to-face learning. I will think that it depends largely on whether the activities conducted in the face-to-face learning sessions promote collaboration amongst the learners. If they do, I will think that we human beings as social animals may not fare too badly in the total effort of group as compared to CSCL learning.

I somewhat felt quite differently in this aspect. While I agree that students are able to multi-task, I am not sure if the depth of analysis will increase likewise. Afterall, if I made a comment and there is no reply/ response from my classmates/ instructor until 2-3 days later, I may have already forgotten the key ideas/ rationale that prompted me to submit the posting in the 1st place. On the other hand, I will think that face-to-face learning sessions will allow the students to engage in in-depth discussions as long as time is permissible. Nonetheless, I do agree that TIME is a premium but I believe it is a constraint that learners in both CSCL and face-to-face settings will experience anyhow. Somehow, I find it hard to believe if someone tells me that a CSCL learner has more time than a face-to-face learner. I will agree that CSCL has more flexibility in time management though.

It seems to me that these 4 levels of cooperative skills are not hierarchical in nature. Am I right to say that in order for a group to be successful, its members have to possess all 4 sets of skills? In that case, I wonder if "sets" instead of "levels" will make more sense? I know that the txtbk presented it as "levels'....

Although I know that it is recommended for the instructor to conduct seperate series of sessions for the students to practice the skills one by one, I wonder if it is feasible for the skills to be paired up or even combined into one complete package for the students to practice all of them at the same time. Especially since forming skills seemed to be the "ground rules", it might be more meaningful if the students practice together with another level of skills.