Summary of part II and III in:
Gerry Stahl, Group Cognition.
Computer Support for collaborative
knowledge
Kathrine A. Nygård
Tool 5100, 22.05.07
Central concepts
(Relating to the 2. C and L in CSCL)
• Collaboration and group cognition
• Learning (as social practice): … a sociocultural view
builds on the assumption that learning has to do with how people
appropriate and master tools for thinking and acting that exist in a
given culture or society (Wertsch I. Säljö, 1998:149).
• Knowledge building: knowledge as a product
• Intersubjectivity
– Communicative space between subjects. Shared
understanding of the situation (‘joint meaning-making’
is the term used by Stahl for this)
A diagram of knowledge – building processes.
Opportunities for Computer Support (Renate’s slide)
Collaborative Knowledge Building
• Computer support should:
– Provide workspace for articulation, interaction,
development and approaching consensus of ideas
– Afford, facilitate and encourage multi-phased
community processes
– Provide a medium for formulate, represent and
communicate ideas at various phases
– Preserve ideas and various formulations for
reviewing, reflection and communication independent
of time/place
Ch. 9
Meaning making
• Culturally defined, social act
• Orientation toward an audience
• Mediated through artifacts
Ch. 11
Multi theoretical approach in
contribution towards a paradigm in
CSCL (a visionary view)
Four themes, supplementing each
other and offering integral
contributions to the theory:
•
•
•
•
Collaborative knowledge building
Group and personal perspectives
Mediation by artifacts
Interaction analysis
Ch. 11
Mediation by artifacts
• Mediation: something happens by means of, or
through the involvement of a mediating object
• We control our actions (behavior) through the
mediation of tools and signs
– Artifacts: Meaningful objects created by people for
specific uses (signs/language, pens, digital tools)
– Artifacts as cultural building blocks
• The artifacts are to cultural evolution what the gene is to
biological evolution (Wartofsky I Engeström 1999)
Ch. 11
Interaction analysis
• How do people rediscover meaning in artifacts?
• “Do artifacts embody meaning or do they embody
meaningful traces of human activity? .. Meaning is
not in the artifact; rather it is in the total situation that
includes artifacts, minds and social practices (240)”
• Bakhtin: An utterance is meaningful only in relation
backwards, to previous utterances and forward to
emerging or anticipated utterances (audience)
• Heidegger: meaning is situated within the extended
dimensions of human temporality
• Engeström: The activity as the unit of analysis
• Builds upon ethnomethodology (Garfinkel) and
converstion analysis (Sacks) – Essential tool: Video
• Interpreting data on the micro-level in relation to the
larger discorse and activity
Ch. 11
Example 1
SimRocket
• Data from a 68 sec. long extract – a
“collaborative moment”
• Analyzing the dialogue in a small group working
together on solving a problem
• This is a ‘co-located’ CSCL setting
• The interpretation of the artifact and interaction
with it on an equal basis with the dialogue
• Problem: Come up with a pair of rockets that can
be used experimentally to determine whether a
rounded or a pointed nose cone will perform
better (on the basis of a list)
Ch 12
Interaction analysis
Understanding utterances
• Indexical utterance: The meaning of the
utterances rely on the context in which
they are said with implicit references to
elements in the situation
• Elliptical utterance: Refers to what is said
in the past
• Projective utterance: Refers to a desired
future state
Ch. 12
Extract from the collaborative
moment: Confusion/The Repair
1:22:10
Chuck
1:22:11
1:22:12
1:22:13
Jamie
Brent
Jamie
Brent
=But it’s not the same
engine
Yeah, It is =
Yes it is,
[Compare two n one
[Number two
Ch. 12
Research goals
• Different aspects of digital competency
– Children’s knowledge about rockets in the
rocket-age
– Ability to carry out experiments: One variable
while everything else is constant
– Learning about new software-tools
• Ability to understand the embedded meaning of the
software
Ch. 13
Embedded meaning in the software
• In our example: The structure of the list
• In general: the computer software program
is an artifact that embodies inferred,
referred, derived and stored intentionality
(supporting the L in CSCL)
• Could you think of examples of what would
be software artifacts’ embodied
intentionality?
Ch. 13
Classifying artifacts
Artifacts are human made and have an embedded
meaning
• Physical artifacts
– Material /meaning in the physical world
• Symbolic artifacts
– Tied to activities in the world: Oral and written language (symbols)
• Computational artifacts
– To be effective in use the user must uncover the embedded
meaning
• Cognitive artifacts
– Internalization of skills into mental tools
Ch. 13
The structure of the rocket-list
Four variables: Nose-cone(2), Number of fins (2), Surface texture (2)
and rocket engine (4)
Ch. 13
“Same”, “Different” and “Compare”
• Understanding accrues when the group’s understanding
changes from a model of standard configuration to one
of pared configurations
• Everyday concepts are used to develop working
knowledge of scientific experimentation (holding
variables constant)
• Meaning making on two levels:
– Group: Building shared meaning through discourse
– Individual: The participants individual interpretation of the discourse (in the group
interaction)
• group learning understood as an basis for individual
learning. In addition to providing the cultural background,
motivational support and interaction it is also a
mechanism for ensuring individual learning (responding to the
argument that group learning is irrelevant because of the temporality of the
groups unities)
Ch. 13
Sketching a theory of building
collaborative knowing
• Influenced by Marlene Scardamalia and Carl
Bereiter (1996), who were the originators of the
term ‘knowledge building’ in context of CSCL
• Focus on brief episodes of group discourse
which builds meaning (to be interpreted by members and
sedimented in artifacts) as a way of understanding
collaboration as different from individual learning
• The theory frame suggested is grounded in
empirical studies
Ch. 15
Understanding the situated data
•
4 Phases:
1.
2.
3.
4.
•
•
•
Breakdown in understanding
Collaborative moment
Efforts in reaching shared understanding
Reaching shared understanding
The situatednes of the utterances: Explicated
trough interpreting the discourse (as a whole)
Teacher role: Creating a productive context for
discourse
Learning to communicative interaction in a
small group
Ch. 15
Explicating tacit knowing
• Tacit knowing: Being able to do but not to explain your
actions (Michael Polanyi, 1966)
• Tacit (practical) knowing has epistemological priority over
explicit (theoretical) knowing (Heidegger, 1996)
• Interplay between tacit and explicit knowing (the current
focus of attention)
• Interpretation is making something explicit
• Discourse is interpretation (making explicit)
• Meaning expressed through the network of consecutive
utterances within the context
• Vygotsky: Internalization/Externalization
Ch. 15
Building collaborative knowing as a
cyclic process
• Relates the group process to individual flow
• The affordances of artifacts
• Social interaction as producing, reproducing and
habituating the group (interactive unit),
individuals (roles and mental subjects) and
situation (network of artifacts)
• Focus on micro-processes
• In relation to the larger cultural-historical context
we are a part of
Ch. 15
Meaning and individual
interpretation (1)
• Vygotsky: Internalization/externalization
• Ex. mother and small child: the evolution
of gestures into speech and speech into
thought
– Pointing as a shared artifact
– Shared language (social)
– Egocentric speech
– Inner speech
– Thought
Ch. 16
Meaning and individual
interpretation (2)
• Cognitive artifacts: internalized forms of
cultural artifacts with it’s origin in the
interpersonal world
• The world: A cultural situation including a
totality of meaningful artifacts
– Human understanding based on the tacit preunderstanding of this world (Heidegger)
Ch. 16
Scientific implications
• Externalization: Learning is made visible
through the creation and use of artifacts
• Scientific objectivity
– Intersubjective validity: meaning as shared
and rigorous interpretation
– Multiple researchers from individual
perspective
– Professional and methodological training
Ch. 16
Meaning and individual
interpretation (3)
• Relations between meaning and interpretation is
central for understanding the mediation of small
group interaction
• Meaning making as collective vs psychological
process
• Reciprocal relationship between meaning (as
shared product of knowledge building) and
interpretation (as recognizing meaning of artifactindividual interpretation)
• Artifact as retainers of intersubjective meaning
(what would be an example?)
• Mediated cognition
Ch. 16
Shared meaning - critical view
• Group meaning is constructed by the interaction
of the individual members (doing their own
interpretations)
• Shared knowledge
– Overlapping
– One individual sharing her knowledge with others
– Group knowledge achieved through discourse
• Acquisition metaphor vs Participation metaphor
Ch. 17
Different perspectives on
knowledge construction
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Collaborative knowledge building (Bereiter)
Social psychology (Resnick, Levine, Teasley)
Distributed cognition (Hutchins, Salomon)
Situated cognition (Schön, Suchman etc.)
Situated learning (Lave & Wenger)
Zone of proximal dev. (Vygotsky)
Activity theory (Cole, Engeström, Kaptelinin, Nardi)
Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel)
Ch. 17
The Virtual Math Team (VTM)
• Collaborative problem-solving of mathematics
problems online (Math forum Web site)
• Chatrooms: small groups of about 4. based on
interests
• Discusses a given math problem for one hour
without supervision (Interaction is logged)
• Can later submit problem - receive expert
feedback
• Follow-up over time (analyzing)
• Micro-analytic study in virtual setting
Ch. 17
Aims and hypothesis
• Analyze concrete situations of collaboration and
student interaction in building knowledge
• Overcoming some of the shortcomings from
SimRocket
– Over time in multiple sessions
– No supervisor participation
– Online communication is fully logged
• Collaborative learning H0:
– A small online group of learners can – on occasions
and under favorable conditions - build collaborative
knowing and shared meaning that exceeds the
knowledge of the group’s individual members (359).
Ch. 17
Theoretical concepts
• Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)
– Legitimate, peripheral participation
• Boundary objects
–
Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the
constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common
identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly
structured in individual-site use. These objects may be abstract or concrete (Star & Grisemer,
1989:393).
• Intersubjectivity (Rommetveit, 1992) and meaningmaking
• What would be illustrations of these concepts
from 1) Stahl’s book, 2) your group projects?
Ch. 18
Methodology
• Ethnomethodology (EM) (Garfinkel, 1967)
– Suggestion for method in CSCL
– Resemblance to grounded theory
– Bottom up-approach: theoretical analysis grounded in
empirical data
• Video analysis as premise
• Interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson 1995)
• Discourse analysis / Conversational analysis
Ch. 18
5 policies for EM
• Data are:
– Everywhere: Member-methods
– Visible: Rules for hum. practice, tacit practice,
group negotiation
– Grounded: Empirical categories, “bracket out”
preexisting theory
– Meaningful: Mediated everyday interaction in
spesf. Activities with others “makes sense”
• accountability
– Situated: Understood in light of that situation
• indexical
Ch. 18