A decade of CSCL

This issue of ijCSCL completes a decade of publication of CSCL research. When the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning emerged about a decade prior to the launching of the journal, there was a pervasive sense of a paradigm revolution in learning research (Koschmann 1996). It was time to transcend cognitive science’s critique of behaviorism, extending the unit of cognition beyond the boundaries of the individual mind (Stahl 2015c). For instance, new directions in theory surfaced around the influential Institute for Learning Research (Brown et al., 1989; Lave & Wenger 1991; Orr 1990; Suchman 1987; Teasley & Roschelle 1993; Winograd & Flores 1986), as well as in distributed cognition (Hutchins 1996), activity theory (Engestrom 1987) and conversation analysis (Goodwin D Damsa 2014; Jones et al., 2006; Overdijk et al., 2014; Stahl 2012; 2013a). Cognitive science argued that human behavior could not be modeled without hypothesizing cognitive structures like mental representations and computations, which mediated responses to the environment, particularly linguistic responses (Chomsky 1959). However, the cognitive approach did not consider structures of interaction at the dialogical, small-group and community level, where language is primarily learned and practiced. Artificial intelligence—which exerted an important influence on CSCL—had already conceptualized cognition as taking place outside the human mind, in software computations and digital representations. The new post-cognitive theories began to postulate structures and practices at the group level, although they did not always clearly distinguish small groups from larger social institutions. Dialogical, interactional and practice-oriented approaches in CSCL have elaborated these conceptions within the context of collaborative learning (Cress & Kimmerle 2008; Ligorio et al., 2013; Oner 2013; Stahl et al., 2014). While the post-cognitive paradigm dominates CSCL theory and seems particularly appropriate to a field focused on group collaboration, it has perhaps been less influential in the areas of technology design and analysis methodology. CSCL research often relies upon technologies designed on a model of individual learning and knowledge transfer, rather than on an Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn (2015) 10:337–344 DOI 10.1007/s11412-015-9222-2