Assessing Online Collaborative Problem Solving Among School Children in Finland : A Case Study Using ATC21S TM in a National Context

Online collaborative problem-solving tasks were piloted in five Finnish schools participating in the Assessment and Teaching of Twenty-first Century Skills (ATC21STM) project. Process stream data from online tasks were captured from 480 Finnish students who explored dyad problem spaces. The log file data were explored to identify indicative behaviours of collaborative problem solving (CPS), which were coded into a series of dichotomous indicators. The Rasch simple logistic model was used to analyse student performance across the social and cognitive dimensions of CPS. Analysis of the Finnish data indicated that the construct can be interpreted using a two-dimensional model, matching the findings of the total cohort of 4,078 students. Further analysis of the data provided evidence that gender has no statistical impact on Finnish students’ CPS abilities in the social or cognitive dimensions. Analysis of the differences in student abilities across grades within and between schools suggested that upper-year students had stronger CPS skills.