This article examines which tasks and roles university faculty should assume when implementing online collaborative learning (CSCL) in virtual environments, in a context where the digitalization accelerated by COVID-19 has reshaped teaching and exposed gaps in teachers’ digital competence.
Drawing on the perceptions of students who participated in real collaborative-learning experiences (104 students across five teacher-education courses), the authors focus on the “orchestration” of the process: from instructional design and the organization of the virtual environment to guidance, mediation, and assessment. The study uses a Likert-type questionnaire and robust statistical analyses (descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, and cluster analysis) to identify which functions are considered most relevant.
The findings convey a clear message: students rate almost everything teachers do to make CSCL work as highly important, with high mean scores across the 31 items analyzed. Tasks with a social and personal component stand out in particular such as providing individual support when needed and motivating students along with offering ongoing feedback and encouragement. By contrast, some functions that are more “invisible” to students, such as forming teams or designing self-assessment instruments, receive slightly lower ratings (though they are still high).
Through principal component analysis, the study consolidates these tasks into seven key roles: pedagogical, assessor/evaluator, social, technological, facilitator/mediator, organizer/manager, and personal. It also identifies three student profiles based on how much importance they assign to these roles (ranging from very high across all roles to more moderate, with less emphasis on mediation and management).
The article’s value lies in offering a practical and fairly comprehensive, data-based map of teaching roles for online CSCL useful for designing faculty development programs (not only technical training, but also preparation focused on support, presence, and care). Its main contribution is confirming that, for students, the success of virtual collaborative learning depends not only on planning and assessment but, above all, on the teacher’s human dimension online.
As a limitation, the sample comes from a single university and from teacher-education degree programs, which suggests the need to replicate the study in other disciplines and contexts. Even so, the proposed roles are transferable and serve as a practical guide for thinking about digital teaching beyond simply “using tools,” highlighting the balance between technological competence and a pedagogical-humanistic approach.
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How to Cite: Hernández-Sellés, N., Muñoz-Carril, P.-C., & González-Sanmamed, M. (2023). Higher Education Teacher’s Roles in Collaborative Learning Processes in Virtual Environments. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 26(1), 39–58. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.26.1.34031
