Professors Co-Edit Handbook on Collaborative Learning

The International Handbook of Collaborative Learning examines the significance of collaborative learning in education. This handbook was co-edited by Dr. Cindy Hmelo-Silver, Dr. Clark Chinn, and Dr. Angela O’Donnell from Rutgers Graduate School of Education (GSE), and Dr. Carol Chan from University of Hong Kong. Written for researchers and graduate-level instructors in various fields of psychology and computer sciences, this handbook is the first to integrate theory and research across diverse areas of study.

Since collaborative learning is a highly interdisciplinary field, there was a need to collect information from a variety of disciplines and centralize it in one resource. The editors drew ideas from scholars of psychology, computer science, mathematics education, science education, and educational technology. They were careful to edit the book so that the language is consistent and understandable to readers knowledgeable in various fields related to collaborative learning.

Dr. Hmelo-Silver, Professor and Chairperson of Educational Psychology, received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. She has contributed to numerous publications and is affiliated with American Educational Research Association, European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction, International Society for the Learning Sciences, as well as the National Association for Research in Science Teaching.

Associate Professor Dr. Chinn is currently serving as Editor of “Educational Psychologist.” He received a Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently working on conceptualizing and investigating epistemic cognition, as well as developing life science curricula that promote conceptual change and model-based reasoning.

Professor Dr. O’Donnell received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Texas Christian University. She has won many awards, with the most recent being the Inaugural Fellow of the American Education Research Association and Outstanding Career Contributions to Cooperative Learning from AERA, both in 2008.

Dr. Chan is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong. She received a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, and has worked as a cognitive researcher at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto. In 2006, she won the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award and the University Teaching Fellow Award.