Promoting the coordination of computer-mediated interdisciplinary collaboration

Efficient net-based (computer-mediated) interdisciplinary collaboration of partners with complementary expertise is shown to depend strongly on the quality of the coordination activities. Confronted with psychiatric case studies dyads of advanced medical and psychology students were asked to jointly formulate a diagnosis and a therapy plan making use of their complementary expertise. A first experiment investigated the effects of different technical realizations of the net-based collaborations on the coordination of activities. It revealed that especially a wellbalanced sequence of phases of joint work with individual working phases was central for the quality of the problem-solving process. The goal of a second experiment is to test the effectiveness of promoting this coordination by vicarious learning from an exemplary net-based collaboration. By combining two strands of research – studies on worked-out examples and work on vicarious learning from dialogue and discourse – we show a new and theoretically well-founded way to strengthen collaborative competence. The data analysis of the second experiment is under way.