Fostering group norm development and orientation while creating awareness contents for improving net-based collaborative problem solving

Self-made awareness contents sometimes do not support group performances.An assumed reason for this problem is that they differ too much structurally.Insight into the others' creation process while building one's own content is helpful.The reason is that a group norm develops about how to create such awareness contents.The generated awareness contents facilitate group performance. Empirical studies have demonstrated that being aware of the knowledge structures and of the underlying information of other group members improves computer-supported collaborative problem solving. While such studies used pre-made individual concept maps as awareness tools, empirical studies that used individual concept maps created by the group members themselves have not shown an advantage for group performance. An assumed reason is that individual members' concept maps differ too much structurally so that using them would need a lot of effort. This experimental study compares 20 triads whose members can observe the map creation process of the other members in their group with 20 triads without this possibility. The results demonstrated that access to the map creation process of the other group members while building one's own concept map led to a group norm of how to create such a map. As a result, group members created more structurally similar maps, which led, as in prior studies with pre-made maps, to improved group performance.