Background: The shortage of skilled workers choosing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers in the USA and worldwide has fueled a movement towards STEAM, in which the "A" addresses the arts and humanities. STEAM education has been proposed as a way to offer relevant problems to solve while drawing on creative and collaborative skills to increase interest and engagement in these fields. Despite the interest in increasing STEAM globally, research on the efficacy of instructional approaches, including ways to assess collaborative problem solving (CPS), is lacking.

People's incorrect recalls can contaminate their collaborators' performance on subsequent tasks, referred to as the social contagion of memory. Research investigating how expectations about group members' abilities and affiliations relate to such contagion has given little attention to the mechanisms underlying any differential reliance on collaborators' contributions.In two experiments, we investigated whether expectations about a collaborative partner influence social contagion and whether source monitoring was related to any differential reliance. Contagion was reduced, for both accurate and inaccurate information, when participants worked with a partner perceived to be of low as compared with high credibility. Participants also showed reduced contagion after working with an out-group as compared with an in-group partner. These findings indicate that partner characteristics influence whether the information generated during a collaborative task is encoded and/or relied upon later. Expectations about potentially problematic sources can motivate resistance to misinformation through careful monitoring of partner contributions.

Many instructional activities ask learners to collaborate, with the goal of enhancing the understandings group members acquire beyond what they might learn working separately. Previous research has shown that collaboration improves learning outcomes in comparison to the results of individuals working on their own. These benefits are presumably attributable to collaboration prompting activities that are beneficial for learning, including the explicit production of information for others, the co-construction of ideas, and opportunities for asking questions and providing explanations. Such interactions may also provide memorial benefits for participants by enhancing memory for their own contributions and encouraging the discounting of inaccurate information. Despite these benefits, though, collaborative interactions can also have clear costs. Collaboration can lead to reduced motivation and a loss of productivity if group members unequally contribute, and errors produced during collaboration can be encoded by other group members to be used on subsequent activities. In the current review, we discuss the benefits and costs of collaboration for learning and memory as identified in educational and cognitive psychological research. We also offer practical suggestions informed by these areas that are intended to optimize the learning benefits of effective collaborative activity.

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is a critical competency in a variety of contexts, including the workplace, school, and home. However, only recently have assessment and curriculum reformers begun to focus to a greater extent on the acquisition and development of CPS skill. One of the major challenges in psychometric modeling of CPS is collecting large‐scale data on teams and processes. In this study, we explore the use of agent‐based modeling (ABM) to model the CPS process, test the sensitivity of outcomes to different population characteristics, and generate simulated data that can provide a novel means by which to refine and develop psychometric models. Methods of adapting trait‐based stochastic processes to a specific task are described, and preliminary results are presented.

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