Effects of an interculturally enriched CSCL script on students' attitudes and performance

In an attempt to foster collaboration in general as well as to bridge intercultural differences in culturally heterogeneous groups engaged in CSCL, this study introduces an interculturally enriched collaboration script (IECS). A randomized, two-group pretest-posttest research design was used to compare the effects of the IECS with a general collaboration script (CS) on students' collaborative learning in culturally heterogeneous groups in a CSCL environment. In this study, Master students from a university in the Netherlands (74 subjects, representing 22 countries) worked in dyads on an environmental problem about biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas. The results showed that the IECS positively affected students' attitude towards online collaboration and satisfaction with learning processes and outcomes. Student groups in both conditions achieved comparable task performance and exhibited a comparable level of willingness to collaborate online.