Creating and Sustaining Online Problem Solving Forums: Two Perspectives

The goal of this chapter is to present and theorize our more successful and less successful attempts to enhance long-term collaborative problem solving in high school, by means of online problem-solving forums. We focus on two classroom communities and their interactions, during two school years, with an additional community, a research group that initiated the use of the forums. In one of the classroom communities, online problem solving has eventually become a routine practice and a valuable addition to classroom problem solving. In another classroom community, the forum did not become active despite considerable effort made, but enduring attempts to activate it led to enhancement of student-student interactions in the classroom. All three communities (i.e., two classroom communities and the research group) gradually developed. Taking the Diffusion of Innovations perspective, we characterize stages of the development and identify its main agents. Taking the Communities of Practice perspective, we characterize each community and illustrate boundary interactions between them as a driving force for their development.