Collaboration is an important yet difficult skill for learners in the 21st century. Recent research has examined how supports, such as group scripts and roles, can help learners collaborate effectively. However, little is known about the perceptions learners have of these supports when provided to them. The purpose of this study was to examine (a) learner’s choices and reasonings for role choices and (b) the impact of group roles. Participants included 111 undergraduate students in a learning strategies for university success course. During the course, students completed two required collaborative tasks, including pre-task planning and a post-task reflection. Students made choices regarding roles in individual and group planning sessions and explained their reasoning for making those choices. Students frequently chose roles relating to strategic task enactment, motivation, and concept/domain knowledge in their individual and group planning sessions with their primary reasons being focused on “self” knowledge, or information about themselves, such as strengths or weaknesses. These findings suggest learners may believe these are important roles for collaboration. The reliance on “self” knowledge for making decisions may be attributed to the fact these groups were collaborating for the first and second times and may not have a plethora of group information to utilize. Contributions of this study to theory, research, and practice will be discussed. / Graduate

The thesis deals with the theme of modern board games and the interactions of a small social group. The thesis is divided into two parts, theoretical and empirical. The theoretical part provides an introduction to the theory of play as such with a more detailed understanding of two play concepts. I also deal with the definition of board games and the differences between classical and modern board games. I devote more space to the modern board games with emphasis on three aspects, namely the social dimension of the play, the existence of the board as a meaningful game space and specific game material. The theory also includes the introduction of a method Interaction Process Analysis of F. Bales and a selected typology of group roles that are both used in the empirical part of the thesis. In the practical part is presented a research of qualitative methodology consisting of observation of three game groups during the part of a concrete modern board game (Dead of Winter). An audio record was taken from each observed game. The collected data was then encoded and processed according to the method of the Interaction Process Analysis and subjected to further analysis. The output of the work is mainly the characteristics of player interactions, the description of their group roles as well as the so-called...