Our analyses also showed that in order to understand collaborative learning we
need to consider contextual aspects of the student discussion and see how
tools/objects mediate learning in an environment where students' social,
personal and cultural contexts are interwoven with the task in hand. In addition,
our initial analyses in this study have shown that the reciprocal relationship
among participants in an online discussion environment could be an important
factor in enhancing the efficiency of joint knowledge building and other
collaborative processes as shown by the high number of messages containing
motivational and personal references. This approach to analysis of collaborative
processes in web-based forums can be further enriched by additional data in the
form of interviews or diaries so that interpretations are not only dependent on
researcher's perspective.