Nobody Says No: Student Self-Censorship in a Collaborative Knowledge Building Activity

This paper explores student self-censorship within an online learning environment. Self-censorship in group activity can be seen as a two-edged sword. While it can be advantageous that a student censor personal frustration and angst when working with others, if the self-censorship impacts on the cognitive contribution a student makes then this may significantly impact upon the overall quality of the group’s collective knowledge artefact. This paper reports on a study where it was found that students had self censored both their feelings and ideas as they collaboratively worked together.

[1]  L. R. Hoffman.  Homogeneity of member personality and its effect on group problem-solving. , 1959, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[2]  Brian P. Mathews,et al.  Group composition, performance and educational attainment , 2000 .

[3]  Päivi Häkkinen,et al.  What Makes Learning and Understanding in Virtual Teams So Difficult? , 2004, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[4]  I. Janis.  Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes , 1982 .

[5]  W. Heath.  The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies , 2008 .

[6]  Gijsbert Erkens,et al.  Analyzing Interactions in CSCL: Methods, Approaches and Issues , 2010 .

[7]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  Why Societies Need Dissent , 2005 .

[8]  Peter Mykytyn,et al.  Impact of heterogeneity and collaborative conflict management style on the performance of synchronous global virtual teams , 2004, Inf. Manag..

[9]  J. Hackman.  Why Teams Don’t Work , 1998 .

[10]  Robert D. Dimitroff,et al.  Organizational Behavior and Disaster: A study of conflict at NASA , 2005 .

[11]  Carlos Caldeira,et al.  Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge (Acting with Technology) , 2006 .

[12]  S. Williams.  Self‐esteem and the self‐censorship of creative ideas , 2002 .

[13]  Robin Mason,et al.  e-Learning and Social Networking Handbook: Resources for Higher Education , 2008 .

[14]  Yigal Rosen,et al.  Complexity of Social Interactions in Collaborative Learning: The Case of Online Database Environment , 2010 .

[15]  James Shanahan,et al.  VALIDATING THE WILLINGNESS TO SELF-CENSOR SCALE: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE EFFECT OF THE CLIMATE OF OPINION ON OPINION EXPRESSION , 2005 .

[16]  Marshall Scott Poole,et al.  Decision Development in Computer-Assisted Group Decision Making , 1995 .

[17]  B. Achinstein.  Community, Diversity, and Conflict Among Schoolteachers: the Ties that Blind (Advances in Contemporary Educational Thought Series) , 2002 .

[18]  Ulrike Cress,et al.  Group awareness and self-presentation in computer-supported information exchange , 2008, Int. J. Comput. Support. Collab. Learn..

[19]  John Woollard,et al.  Psychology for the Classroom: Constructivism and Social Learning , 2010 .

[20]  D. Jonassen,et al.  Communication patterns in computer mediated versus face-to-face group problem solving , 2001 .

[21]  M. MarkFischetti.  Better Than Individuals , 2006 .

[22]  Frances J. Milliken,et al.  Diversity and creativity in work groups: A dynamic perspective on the affective and cognitive processes that link diversity and performance. , 2003 .

[23]  Warren E. Watson,et al.  Cultural diversity''s impact on interaction process and performance: Comparing homogeneous and diver , 1993 .

[24]  Cynthia L. Uline,et al.  Constructive Conflict: How Controversy Can Contribute to School Improvement , 2003, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[25]  C. Bereiter,et al.  Liberal education in a knowledge society , 2002 .

[26]  M. Scardamalia.  Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge , 2002 .

[27]  Lu Hong,et al.  Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[28]  D. Clements,et al.  Social-cognitive behaviors and higher-order thinking in educational computer environments , 1992 .

[29]  Pamela J. Hinds,et al.  Distributed Work , 2002 .

[30]  J. Levine,et al.  Collaboration: The Social Context of Theory Development , 2004, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[31]  David P. Tegarden,et al.  Knowledge Management Technology for Revealing Cognitive Diversity within a Management Team , 2003 .

[32]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[33]  Alan G. Roberts.  Team role balance : investigating knowledge-building in a CSCL environment , 2007 .

[34]  Katerine Bielaczyc,et al.  Designing Social Infrastructure: Critical Issues in Creating Learning Environments With Technology , 2006 .

[35]  Terri R. Kurtzberg.  Feeling Creative, Being Creative: An Empirical Study of Diversity and Creativity in Teams , 2005 .

[36]  Asako Miura,et al.  Synergy between Diversity and Similarity in Group-Idea Generation , 2004 .

[37]  Roger Guimerà,et al.  Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance , 2005, Science.

[38]  Bruce M. Burnett,et al.  Online collaborative Assessment: Unpacking both process and product , 2005 .

[39]  Stephen Nicholas,et al.  Knowledge Creation in Groups: The Value of Cognitive Diversity, Transactive Memory, and Openmindedness Norms , 2005, ECKM.

[40]  Joseph T. Banas,et al.  Comparing Alternative Conceptualizations of Functional Diversity in Management Teams: Process and Performance Effects , 2002 .