Open Access

Laura Spang, Martin Greisel, Ingo Kollar

• Background Despite its potential, collaborative learning is not always successful. Learners often have difficulties to overcome regulation problems such as diverging goals within their group. If group members have different (i.e. heterogeneous) perceptions of the group’s current regulation problems, and fail to homogenize them, this may endanger successful collaboration. Methods N = 311 pre-service teachers collaborated online to analyze a fictional classroom case. Afterward, they individually rated (a) what problems they encountered during collaboration (to arrive at a measure for homogeneity of problem perceptions), (b) their awareness of the heterogeneity of the problem perceptions within their group, and (c) different indicators of regulation success. We additionally analyzed videos and video-recall interviews of groups with pronounced heterogeneous or homogeneous problem perception ratings to better understand how homo-/heterogeneous problem perceptions affectBackground Despite its potential, collaborative learning is not always successful. Learners often have difficulties to overcome regulation problems such as diverging goals within their group. If group members have different (i.e. heterogeneous) perceptions of the group’s current regulation problems, and fail to homogenize them, this may endanger successful collaboration. Methods N = 311 pre-service teachers collaborated online to analyze a fictional classroom case. Afterward, they individually rated (a) what problems they encountered during collaboration (to arrive at a measure for homogeneity of problem perceptions), (b) their awareness of the heterogeneity of the problem perceptions within their group, and (c) different indicators of regulation success. We additionally analyzed videos and video-recall interviews of groups with pronounced heterogeneous or homogeneous problem perception ratings to better understand how homo-/heterogeneous problem perceptions affect collaboration. Findings Path models suggest that the homogeneity of problem perceptions was positively related with regulation success. However, awareness of heterogeneity of the problem perceptions within the group was not. Video and interview data indicate that despite knowing about their heterogeneous problem perceptions, learners may be unable to align these perceptions successfully. Contribution Group members should be supported to arrive at homogeneous problem perceptions to positively influence regulation success in collaborative learning.…