New societal demands call for schools to train students' collaboration skills. However, research thus far has focused mainly on promoting collaboration to facilitate knowledge acquisition and has rarely provided insight into how to train students' collaboration skills. This study demonstrates the positive effects on the quality of students' collaboration and their knowledge acquisition of an instructional approach that consists of conventional instruction and an online tool that fosters students' joint reflection on their collaborative behavior by employing self-and peer assessment and goal setting. Both the instruction and the collaboration reflection tool were designed to promote students' awareness of effective collaboration characteristics (the RIDE rules) and their own collaborative behavior. First-year technical vocational students (N = 198, M age = 17.7 years) worked in heterogeneous triads in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment (CSCL) on topics concerning electricity. They received either 1) conventional instruction about collaboration and the online collaboration reflection tool, 2) collaboration instruction only, or 3) no collaboration instruction and no tool. Analysis of chat data (n = 92) and knowledge tests (n = 87) showed that students from the instruction with tool condition outperformed the other students as far as their collaborative behavior and their domain knowledge gains.

Background: Creating concept maps can help students overcome challenges of accurate knowledge monitoring and thus foster learning. However, students' knowledge often contains gaps and misconceptions, even after concept map creation. Theoretically, students could benefit from additional support, but it is unclear whether this might also be the case for (more practical-oriented) secondary vocational students.Objectives: This study investigated whether the effectiveness of concept maps for learning could be improved by providing students with expert examples and reflection prompts in addition to their self-generated concept maps.Methods: First-year secondary vocational students (N = 91, M age = 17.3 years) participated in this study, which utilized a pretest-intervention-posttest design. Regarding the intervention, students worked in two successive online learning environments, in which they had to present their knowledge in concept maps. After creation, students' concept maps were, depending on condition, supplemented with (1) an expert example with comparative feedback (a combined concept map) and related reflection prompts, (2) the combined concept map only, or (3) no combined concept map and no prompts.Results and Conclusions: Analyses based on students' domain knowledge demonstrate that students significantly increased their knowledge in all conditions. Data indicate that there was no significant difference in knowledge gain between conditions. Further analysis showed that students in the experimental conditions demonstrated higher learning gains if they consulted the combined concept map more often than their peers.Implications: Access to an example in addition to students' self-generated concept maps seems promising in fostering their knowledge acquisition. However, secondary vocational students might need additional ways of support to guarantee higher learning gains. Avenues to increase the effectiveness of support are discussed.

Creating concept maps is considered to be a powerful means for learning. It requires students to systematically organize and integrate their knowledge, which can foster meaningful learning. However, students scarcely spontaneously engage in the (meta)cognitive processes necessary for effective knowledge integration, such as reflection, which can hamper the effectiveness of concept mapping for learning. This study explores the effect of additional support that stimulates reflection by means of expert examples, reflection prompts, and classroom discussion. First-year technical vocational students (N = 144, Mage = 17.5 years) studied electricity-related topics in an online learning environment and created concept maps about their knowledge. Students’ concept maps were supplemented with either (1) no support (control condition), (2) an expert example (a combined concept map, containing their own and an expert example concept map, with differences highlighted), (3) an expert example and reflection prompts students had to process individually, (4) an expert example and reflection prompts students had to process individually after a teacher-guided classroom discussion. Students in the classroom discussion condition showed higher learning gains compared to all other conditions. This can be explained by the quality of their reflection, which proved to be a significant predictor of learning gain.

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