Factors of Self-Creating Digital Concept Maps for Fostering Knowledge and Information Awareness and Problem-Solving Performance in Virtual Groups

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In collaborative learning settings, it is important that the group members are informed regarding the knowledge of their collaboration partners. However, the acquisition of this knowledge is difficult, especially in virtual groups, that is, groups with spatially distributed members collaborating computer-supported. For solving this problem effectively, the proposer developed an approach for fostering "knowledge and information awareness". This approach provides members of virtual groups with both the knowledge structures of their collaboration partners and the underlying information represented by means of digital concept maps. Using this approach has been proven to improve the group performance and to help overcome important collaboration barriers. However, in studies in which the awareness contents had to be created by the group members themselves, major problems appeared that reduced the effectiveness of this approach. Nevertheless, self-generation of such contents is indispensable in application fields (e.g., in school). Therefore, the goal of this research proposition is to solve the problems of self-generation of awareness contents in order to be able to use the advantages of the "knowledge and Information awareness" approach in application fields. Study 1 investigates how group members can be motivated to create such awareness contents. Study 2 wants to solve the problem of limited comparability of self-generated awareness contents. Study 3 wants to show that, in consideration of the results from Study 1 and Study 2, self-generated awareness contents could even lead to a more effective and efficient awareness approach compared to given awareness contents.