Collaborative knowledge construction during computational lab activities in Financial Mathematics

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a growing interest in including some aspects of computation and computational thinking within science subjects, in particular Mathematics. Moreover, the COVID pandemic has increased the opportunities for remote-based work across economies, including education. This implies that workers and students should be able to collaborate remotely using collaborative technologies. In this paper, we show how tailored student-led computational practices designed for a Computational Finance module provide opportunities for the co-creation of knowledge in Financial Mathematics in a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning environment. We analyzed students’ answers to a weekly survey using Gunawardena et al. (1997) Interaction Analysis Model for collaborative knowledge construction. The results show that, in a large number of discussions, the highest levels of the collaborative learning process were achieved.