Beginner level
No prior experience required
Optimizing Collaborative Learning in Online Courses
Flexible schedule
1 week, 6 to 8 hours per week
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*Proof of full-time student enrollment required. Acceptable forms of ID include a letter from your university’s registrar office or an unofficial transcript. Email your documents to learnlab-help@lists.andrew.cmu.edu.
What you will learn
- Explain what makes collaborative learning effective in online settings.
- Design group structures, roles, and tasks that promote productive peer interaction.
- Identify common failure points in online collaboration and ways to address them.
- Use cooperative learning and peer-learning strategies to improve course activities.
Course description
Collaborative learning can deepen understanding and engagement, but online collaboration often underperforms when group structures and peer interactions are left to chance. Effective design requires deliberate choices about roles, tasks, accountability, and the kinds of interaction that support learning.
In this course, you will learn how to design collaborative learning experiences for online settings using cooperative learning principles, peer-learning structures, and group task design. The course focuses on practical ways to make online collaboration more productive, inclusive, and aligned with learning goals.
Syllabus
Module 1: Cooperative Learning
- Design Jigsaw-based cooperative learning activities that support interdependence and individual accountability.
- Determine the effects of a given group size and composition on participation, equity, and learning in a given context.
- Design data-based interventions to address isolation, free-riding, and uneven contribution in online cooperative learning.
Module 2: Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)
- Define computer supported collaborative learning.
- Consider collaborative assignments for challenging tasks.
- Optimize group size, composition, and interdependence.
- Match synchronous and asynchronous assignments to the collaborative goal.
- Maximize social presence in online collaborative environments.
- Use structured collaboration processes to optimize team outcomes.
Meet the instructor
Dr. Ken Koedinger
Ken Koedinger is the Hillman University Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, with appointments in Human-Computer Interaction and Psychology. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and has experience teaching in an urban high school. He has developed data-sharing and analytics infrastructures that support innovations in learning, including DataShop and LearnSphere, and has used them to improve learning as illustrated in his hundreds of publications. He directs LearnLab and co-founded Carnegie Learning in 1998, the first AI in Education company to bring intelligent tutoring technology into widespread use in schools. His PLUS project provides hybrid human-AI tutoring to middle school math students in schools around the country. He is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Association for Computing Machinery.
Dr. Steven Moore
Steven Moore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology at George Mason University. He studies how to design educational technologies that improve student learning and how people use AI to learn. Drawing on learning science, human-computer interaction, and applied natural language processing, he builds and evaluates AI-enhanced courseware and assessment tools. His work advances learnersourcing, crowdsourcing, and human-AI collaboration for content creation and feedback at scale. Recently, he has focused on using large language models to support instructional design by applying structured rubrics consistently across varied content types. His academic research is informed by extensive industry experience and consulting with universities and school districts.
Where to go next
Designing for Social and Peer-Driven Motivation
Design for lasting motivation by supporting identity, reflection, belonging, ownership, and resilience over time.
Using Learnersourcing to Improve Learning Experiences
Use learnersourcing to improve learning experiences by designing tasks that let learners contribute valuable content, insight, and feedback.
Social-Emotional Learning for Learning Designers
Design learning experiences that support social-emotional competencies and create conditions for stronger learner growth and connection.