Article

Resum

The processes of socially shared regulation in small groups of students who perform collaborative tasks through forums involving asynchronous communication are explored in this article. The specific aim of the study is to identify profiles of shared regulation in groups of students who have different performance levels on the task, depending on the regulatory activities exercised by the groups and their distribution over time. For that purpose, a case study was developed; six small groups of university students collaboratively performed a complex task (for 29 days) in a virtual environment based on asynchronous discussion forums. The results revealed three different profiles: (i) a profile with stable and high regulation; (ii) a profile with partially stable and medium regulation; and (iii) a profile with unstable and low regulation. The first two profiles were observed in the groups with high performance levels on the task, while the third profile was observed in the low-performing groups. Therefore, some recommendations are suggested to support processes of shared regulation in asynchronous collaborative learning situations.