Soziale Interaktion ist eine Voraussetzung für CSCL . Damit aber soziale Interaktion stattfindet, sind 3 Hürden von CSCL zu überwinden.

1. CSCL-Pädagogik: Bisher fehlt eine Pädagogik für kollaboratives Lernen in verteilten Gruppen.
2. CSCL-Kommunikationsmedium: Bisherige CSCL-Umgebungen schränken die Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten im Vergleich zu direkter Kommunikation stark ein (z.B. meist Beschränkung auf Text)
3. CSCL-Umgebung: CSCL-Software selbst bieten nicht immer die benötigte Funktionalität und ihre Benutzerschnittstelle ist verbesserungswürdig.

Chapter 2 reports on the pitfalls and barriers imposed by the use of telecommunication media, in particular text-based CMC. It firstly discusses the two pitfalls educators may fall into when using CSCL, namely taking social interaction for granted and restricting social interaction to cognitive processes. The pitfalls connect to the three barriers organized as rings (see Figure 1.2). The chapter continues by describing the barriers in each ring. The first ring is concerned with the lack of CSCL pedagogy. The second is concerned with the social psychological effects and media effects on messages when traditional (e.g., audio only and video conferencing) and new communication media (e.g. e-mail and computer conferencing) are involved in communication activities. Media richness and social presence theory pertain to that media research. The third is concerned with the CSCL environment itself, that is, the lack of social functionality and issues about interaction design and usability.

Social interaction has been identified as a key element in group learning. This social interaction is not only necessary for stimulating cognitive processes but also for socioemotional processes to occur, which are underlying group forming and group dynamics. The literature suggests that creating a sense of community, trust and belonging, and social cohesiveness amongst learners play an important role in facilitating learning behavior and in increasing learning performance. The problem is that not all computer-supported collaborative learning environments used by distributed learning groups appear to be able to enable social interaction and group dynamics. The use of communication media embedded in these computer-supported collaborative learning environments present a number of pitfalls and barriers that potentially impede social interaction. This chapter describes the two pitfalls educators have to avoid and the barriers that they have to be overcome to achieve this needed social interaction. Without it, the effectiveness of group learning may decrease.