ABSTRACT
Collaborative situations have started to serve as promising knowledge-building environments. Cognitive science should provide theoretical bases for them, by explaining mechanisms of how collaboration leads the participants to deeper, more conceptual understanding. This chapter analyzes the collaborative process of solving a simple fraction problem. It argues that the basic components of constructive collaboration are the externalized traces of the task-doer’s cognitive workings and their re-interpretations by the monitor, in verbal forms. Technology can augment implementation of the conditions by providing support to enhance externalization and re-interpretation. To take a simple example, the process of reading can be made visible by having subjects place cards with sentences onto a two-dimensional space. Video-recording of first stages of learning complex skills can be cut into segments and commented on to identify necessary steps.
