Comprehension Monitoring and Regulation in Distance Collaboration

Abstract

Comprehension Monitoring and Regulation in Distance Collaboration Kwangsu Cho (kwangsu@pitt.edu) Christian D. Schunn (schunn@pitt.edu) Alan M. Lesgold (al@pitt.edu) Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh 3939 O’Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Abstract Comprehension monitoring and regulation in a distance learning situation were examined in comparison to individual learning through an error-detection paradigm. The collaborative learning condition produced significantly better learning and monitoring. These results were interpreted as the effect of regulative interaction in the collaboration. Then, the specific interactions of 3 good and 3 poor pairs were contrasted to examine their interaction pattern in terms of monitoring and regulation. The results showed that the good pairs had a higher level of monitoring and regulative interaction. Also when the good and poor groups successfully monitored comprehension failure, the poor groups implemented less effective regulation strategies. To understand text, learners need to integrate successively encountered information from that text into a coherent and well-integrated (mental) representation (Kintsch, 1998). According to Kintsch this comprehension process proceeds in a piecemeal way, sequentially developing a bigger and more coherent representation. This process tends to be prone to errors such as representation of incorrect information and/or misrepresentation of correct information due to omissions, inconsistencies, and/or anomalous and unclear text. When these comprehension failures occur, learners should be able to use metacognitive monitoring to detect the failures and regulation strategies to repair them and thus construct a more coherent understanding of the text in order not to end with a lack of understanding or misunderstanding. However, despite the significance of monitoring and regulation strategies to text understanding, learners tend to fail to detect their own misunderstandings (Markman, 1979), ignore incorrect information (Otero & Kintsch, 1992), and overestimate their own understandings (Glenberg, Wilkinson, & Epstein, 1982) and capabilities (Presseley & Ghatala, 1990). Learners are too often satisfied with their faulty understanding to challenge given tasks and hence fail to trigger regulation processes. Accordingly, various efforts such as metacognitive strategy training, setting up explicit comprehension goals, or self-generating feedback have been made to improve learners’ comprehension. Considering that effective learning often takes place in social settings, and that individual learners’ comprehension could be affected by their peers’ comprehension, it seems worthwhile to examine comprehension monitoring and regulation in collaborative learning situations. More specifically, comprehension monitoring and regulation seem especially critical in distance collaboration situations where a lot of learning takes place from text. Therefore, the goals of this research are to examine whether distance collaboration improves individuals’ comprehension monitoring and regulation abilities, as well as the conditions that make distance collaboration produce effective or ineffective text comprehension. Monitoring and Regulation in Collaboration Monitoring and regulation have been considered critical in effective face-to-face collaboration because they help learners construct a more coherent understanding. First, externalizing thinking and understanding through communication might help collaborators better monitor and regulate their performance (Miyake, 1997) because it causes thinking and understanding to become objects that can be sharable and manipulable between collaborators (Miyake, 1986). While learners working alone are often subject to self-confirmation bias, learners can benefit from working with peers thanks to a ‘checking mechanism’ in collaboration (Miyake, 1986) that advances comprehension monitoring and regulation. Second, the division of cognitive processes in collaboration (Dillenbourg, Baker, Blaye, & O’Malley, 1995) may play a part in improving monitoring and regulation in collaboration. For example, one peer might take the role of leader, while another peer might take the role of monitor (e.g. Miyake, 1986). In the process of collaboration, many errors made are detected and corrected by partners (Miyake, 1986; Resnick & Salmon, 1993). Also, Karabenick (1996) recently showed that learners may have better comprehension monitoring after receiving questions from colearners. Third, comprehension monitoring and regulation could be easily implemented when peers have conflicting perspectives. As Piaget’s socio-cognitive conflict theory suggests, collaborating individuals with different understandings of the same task may advance their understanding in the process of resolving their differences. Fourth, regulating comprehension problems seems fundamental to collaboration processes because the regulation process in collaboration may be activated automatically (Schegloff, 1991), and incorrect elements of their representation might then be fixed through communicative interactions such as engaged discussion (Kruger, 1992), elaboration or arguments (van Boxtel, van