In my opinion the added values of CSCL are; to teach students how to express themselves to others, how to put reaction on others' work, critical thinking, etc.etc. all constructivist learning principles. Of course you can do all these also in the classroom with face-to-face discussions, but usage of ICT brings quite advantages as mentioned in previous message.

However, there is another added value I think. This is to prepare students (especially higher education students) for professional life conditions. As our society is being transformed into an information society, a new type of worker is emerging. This is a knowledge worker, who is supposed to be a life-long learner and who is also supposed to be a knowledge constructor. As the work conditions are being more and more sophisticated, the need for collaboration among different disciplines is ever also increasing. In addition, most of the times collaborating people are geographically distributed or not available whenever they are needed so they might have time limitations. So, the knowledge worker is supposed to work in multidisciplinary teams, geographically distributed and without any time limitation.

Therefore, especially in higher education, students should also be prepared for this new type of working. But, I think we need to develop appropriate scenarios for usable and "socialable" CSCL environments to attract students and make them familiar with computer (or web or networked computers) supported collaborative learning, working, knowledge construction, ect, etc. environments.