Concrete definition of beneficial collaborative dialogues

Collaborative learning is often superior to individual learning, but not consistently so. To understand why not, we applied the ICAP theory of cognitive engagement to define and operationalize various collaborative dialogue patterns and identified the co-generative pattern as the optimal one for maximizing learning. We used the definitions to code dialogues from data collected in our prior studies and show that dyads with higher co-generative scores learned more than dyads with lower co-generative scores. This suggests that collaborative learning is more effective if a certain dialogue pattern occurs.