Cognitive roles in cooperative problem solving at university level

This paper addresses the didactic issue of promoting the construction of the problem-solving competency for undergraduate students. We report the design of a learning activity, engaging students in collaborative problem solving in topology, each of them playing as a cognitive function coming into play when a mathematician faces a problem. To shed light on the impact of the roles played by the students with respect to the solving-problem process, we analyze some student's protocols from which we carry out for each role some actions as well as some benefits recognized by the students.