Leveraging CSCL for Social Emotional Learning: Early Insights from a Large-Scale Classroom Study

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) helps students to develop healthy identities, regulate emotions, build relationships, and make responsible decisions. Effective SEL instruction often relies on group-based activities; however, traditional classrooms without technological support make it difficult to capture the fine-grained interactions among students. As a result, teachers struggle to provide timely feedback and interventions. This paper reports on an ongoing project that leverages a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment to implement 36 SEL lessons with fifth and sixth-grade students over the course of a semester. We describe the design and implementation of the curriculum and present preliminary findings from a pilot study. Early results indicate positive feedback from both teachers and students, along with a negative correlation between students’ off-topic chat behavior, characterized by nonsensical or “gibberish” messages, and their learning performance.