When computer-supported collaboration means computer-supported competition: professional mediation as a model for collaborative learning.

This article analyzes collaboration in a computer-supported learning environment based upon the professional practices of mediation and dispute resolution. In thus doing, it explores the nature of collaborative learning in a setting marked by the agency of competition as much as cooperation. Interviews with learners suggest that the processes of collaborative learning in this competitive environment were fundamentally similar to collaborative learning processe observ in more cooperative connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss (Hutchins, 1995). Individual learners assumed characters that mapped to important ultimate parts of the conceptual domain. Learners unraveled understanding through feedback on their hold role from peers, and by dint of observing their peers enact parts that represented ...