Collaborative learning in a web-mediated environment : a study of communicative practices

New opportunities for conceptualising, designing and facilitating collaborative learning are rapidly expanding with the technological innovations and proliferation of web-mediated learning and teaching. By enabling social interactions via an electronic medium, web technologies are not only expanding but also transforming the social interaction space of collaborative learning. This paper explores collaborative learning viewed from these social interaction processes. More specifically, the paper applies a Communicative Model of Collaborative Learning to make sense of students' interactions in a management subject taught in a combined face-to-face and web-mediated mode. This model provides a methodological instrument for the analysis of communicative practices in concrete learning processes. By analysing the empirical data from linguistic interactions among students, the paper investigates not only what these interactions mean but also what they produce in a particular learning situation and how they affect learning. In particular, the paper investigates processes of knowledge co-creation that are integral to the development of capabilities for life-long learning.