Coercing knowledge construction in collaborative learning environments

Multidisciplinary teams are often employed to solve complex problems, but research has shown that using such teams does not guarantee arriving at good solutions. Good team-solutions require team members possessing a good degree of common ground. In this contribution an ICT-tool based upon making individual perspectives explicit to other team members is studied. Two versions of the tool that differed in the extent to which users were coerced to adhere to embedded support principles were used, in both a laboratory and a secondary professional education setting. Coercion, as expected, increased negotiation of common ground in both settings. However, results were contradictory with regard the amount of common ground achieved. Overall, it can be concluded that NTool and its underlying framework affect negotiation of common ground, and that adding some coercion increases this effect. However, one should be careful with the specific task and audience before implementing NTool.