The article suggests four methods to avoid the pitfalls

• Using collaborative learning methods
  • Focusing on collaborative learning conversation skills aimed at promoting epistemic fluency
  • Using a sentence opener-based communication interface
  • These collaborative learning methods can support the social psychological processes to foster and maintain group cohesion
• Building interactivity into web-based CSCL environments
  • Focus on the actors and agents who are involved in social interaction and address their needs
  • Building interactive web-based CSCL environments
  • Interactivity enables educational techniques that stimulate collaboration and the development of a learning community to occur
• Changing the instructor’s and learner’s role in distributed learning groups
  • Instructor’s should shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered learning, shift from individual learning to group learning, and shift from contiguous learning groups to asynchronous distributed learning groups
  • Online instructors should start discussions but relinquish control to allow students to continue discussion on their own.
• Increasing social presence in distributed learning groups
  • Social presence should be cultivated through creation of conductive learning environments, training participants how to create social presence, and building a sense of community.
  • This is more concerned skills and techniques—as opposed to medium—that will impact students’ perception of interaction and social presence