This study explored the characteristics of individual contributions to
student-led productive collaborative learning as it takes place in real
time. Two independent analytical methods grounded in different research
traditions, metacognitive regulation and role analysis, were used
independently and jointly to identify patterns of individual
participation to collective processes within groups that differed in
quality of their joint outcome. The findings provide consolidated
evidence of the importance of socially shared metacognitive regulation
(SSMR) in productive collaborative learning, and complementary evidence
of qualitative differences in focus of individual contributions to SSMR
within higher and lower performing groups. The analysis of active
participatory roles to the group effort revealed individuals' flexible
adoption of multiple roles, especially content-focused roles in higher
performing groups, and less flexible roles focused on procedural matters
in lower performing groups. Combining the meaningful findings obtained
from SSMR and role analysis supports the value of researching individual
and group level processes simultaneously.