Developing professional skills and social capital through computer supported collaborative learning in university contexts

This study aimed to compare the efficacy of collaborative learning in face-to-face and online university courses in developing professional skills and social capital. One hundred and sixty-six psychology majors learnt professional skills in seminars taught by the same teacher online and face-to-face. The different groups of participants achieved similar growth in level of professional knowledge, social self-efficacy, self-efficacy for problem solving and empowerment. Instead, online students were top performers on competence-based tasks. Follow-up evaluation after 9 months showed that social ties, formed initially more in the face-to-face groups, lasted more among online students. Our results indicate that Computer Assisted Collaborative Learning could provide educational opportunities to new groups of learners as well as to more traditional campus-based students. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.