Team-based work is essential in performing daily school library services to teachers and students, but it has
not been widely adopted in school librarian education. Hence, it may be beneficial to expand current
educational curricula to include the skills of effective teamwork in order to prepare library students for real-
life collaborative projects. Such approach may help in-service school librarians to design more interactive
library programs. To accomplish this goal, it may help for educators and librarians to gain a better
understanding of how to spot student who have a propensity for team work. Currently, little is known about
how to identify students who tend toward collaborative learning online as opposed to those who avoid
collaboration, particularly in school library distance education coursework. The purpose of this project is to
identify potential avoidance behaviors exhibited by students in online classrooms of a school library program.
Of particular interest is the question of how individual coping styles in information seeking and avoidance
will influence collaborative learning in a Web-based collaborative learning environment. Copying styles are
idefined as monitors (seekers) and blunters (avoiders) in this paper.