Daniel D. Suthers

Technology affordances for intersubjective meaning making: A research agenda for CSCL

Now well into its second decade, the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) appears healthy, encompassing a diversity of topics of study, methodologies, and representatives of various research communities. It is an appropriate time to ask: what central questions can integrate our work into a coherent field? This paper proposes the study of technology affordances for intersubjective meaning making as an integrating research agenda for CSCL. A brief survey of epistemologies of collaborative learning and forms of computer support for that learning characterize the field to be integrated and motivate the proposal. A hybrid of experimental, descriptive and design methodologies is proposed in support of this agenda. A working definition of intersubjective meaning making as joint composition of interpretations of a dynamically evolving context is provided, and used to propose a framework around which dialogue between analytic approaches can take place.

Beyond threaded discussion: Representational guidance in asynchronous collaborative learning environments

Although most online learning environments are predominately text based, researchers have argued that representational support for the conceptual structure of a problem would address problems of coherence and convergence that have been shown to be associated with threaded discussions and more effectively support collaborative knowledge construction. The study described in this paper sets out to investigate the merits of knowledge mapping representations as an adjunct to or replacement for threaded discussion in problem solving by asynchronously communicating dyads. Results show that users of knowledge maps created more hypotheses earlier in the experimental sessions and elaborated on them more than users of threaded discussions. Participants using knowledge maps were more likely to converge on the same conclusion and scored significantly higher on post-test questions that required integration of information distributed across dyads in a hidden profile design, suggesting that there was greater collaboration during the session. These results were most consistent when a knowledge map with embedded notes was the primary means of interaction rather than when it augmented a threaded discussion. The paper also offers a methodological contribution: a paradigm for practical experimental study of asynchronous collaboration. It is crucial to understand how to support collaborative knowledge construction in the asynchronous settings prevalent in online learning, yet prior experimental research has focused on face-to-face and synchronous collaboration due to the pragmatic problems of conducting controlled studies of asynchronous interaction. A protocol is outlined that enables study of asynchronous collaboration in a controlled setting.

Argumentation, Computer Support, and the Educational Context of Confronting Cognitions

The current period in the history of mankind has been coined as the knowledge age (Brown & Duguid, 2000; Bereiter, 2002). This term serves to distinguish this period from its predecessor, the information age. In contrast to information, knowledge entails a knower, is hard to detach from its owner, and seems to be something that we digest rather than hold. Knowledge lies less in databases than in people, and has to be disclosed by some form of collective activity, and people have to learn how be engaged in collaborative activities that produce new knowledge. In professional contexts at least, the people who construct knowledge are called ‘knowledge workers’, a term that can be associated with slavery, under those who coordinate them, and who need knowledge for economic reasons. Because knowledge does not really have ownership, it can be turned into economic value by anyone who knows how to do it. Whatever the undertone, currently there is a more than humanitarian interest in collaborative learning, especially in forms of collaboration that allow people to display and develop their knowledge.

A Framework for Conceptualizing, Representing, and Analyzing Distributed Interaction

The relationship between interaction and learning is a central concern of the learning sciences, and analysis of interaction has emerged as a major theme within the current literature on computer-supported collaborative learning. The nature of technology-mediated interaction poses analytic challenges. Interaction may be distributed across actors, space, and time, and vary from synchronous, quasi-synchronous, and asynchronous, even within one data set. Often multiple media are involved and the data comes in a variety of formats. As a consequence, there are multiple analytic artifacts to inspect and the interaction may not be apparent upon inspection, being distributed across these artifacts. To address these problems as they were encountered in several studies in our own laboratory, we developed a framework for conceptualizing and representing distributed interaction. The framework assumes an analytic concern with uncovering or characterizing the organization of interaction in sequential records of events. The framework includes a media independent characterization of the most fundamental unit of interaction, which we call uptake. Uptake is present when a participant takes aspects of prior events as having relevance for ongoing activity. Uptake can be refined into interactional relationships of argumentation, information sharing, transactivity, and so forth for specific analytic objectives. Faced with the myriad of ways in which uptake can manifest in practice, we represent data using graphs of relationships between events that capture the potential ways in which one act can be contingent upon another. These contingency graphs serve as abstract transcripts that document in one representation interaction that is distributed across multiple media. This paper summarizes the requirements that motivate the framework, and discusses the theoretical foundations on which it is based. It then presents the framework and its application in detail, with examples from our work to illustrate how we have used it to support both ideographic and nomothetic research, using qualitative and quantitative methods. The paper concludes with a discussion of the framework’s potential role in supporting dialogue between various analytic concerns and methods represented in CSCL.

Representational guidance for collaborative inquiry.

For a number of years, my colleagues and I (see acknowledgments) have been building, testing, and refining a diagrammatic environment (“Belvedere”) intended to support secondary school children’s learning of critical inquiry skills in the context of science (Suthers, Connelly, Lesgold, Paolucci, Toth, Toth, & Weiner, 2001; Toth, Suthers, & Lesgold, 2002). The diagrams were first designed to engage students in complex scientific argumentation with the help of an intelligent tutoring system. (For the purposes of this chapter, scientific argumentation is a dialectic in which participants mutually evaluate alternative hypotheses according to their consistency with empirical evidence and related criteria such as plausibility of the proposed causal explanations and reliability of the evidence. Participants may but need not necessarily take conflicting positions.) The diagrams were later simplified to focus on evidential relations between data and hypotheses. This change was driven in part by a refocus on collaborative learning (Koschmann, 1994; Slavin, 1980; Webb & Palincsar, 1996), which led to a major change in how we viewed the role of the interface representations. Rather than being a medium of communication or a formal record of the argumentation process, we came to view the representations as resources (stimuli and guides) for conversation and reasoning (Collins & Ferguson, 1993; Roschelle, 1994). Laboratory and field trials with Belvedere provided many examples of situations in which Belvedere’s diagrammatic representations appeared to be influencing learner’s argumentation. Meanwhile, various other projects with similar goals (i.e., critical inquiry in a collaborative learning context) were using substantially different representational systems (to be reviewed in this chapter). Finding that the literature lacked systematic research on this variable, I undertook a program of exploring the hypothesis that the expressive constraints imposed by a representation and the information (or lack of information) that it makes salient may have facilitative effects on students’ argumentation during collaborative learning.

Technology affordances for intersubjective learning: a thematic agenda for CSCL

After a brief survey of epistemologies of collaborative learning and forms of computer support for that learning, the study of technology affordances for intersubjective learning is proposed as a thematic agenda for CSCL. A fusion of experimental, ethnomethodological and design methodologies is proposed in support of this agenda. A working definition of intersubjective learning as joint composition of interpretations of a dynamically evolving context is provided, along with an outline for analysis under this definition.

Collaborative representations: supporting face to face and online knowledge-building discourse

The present widespread interest in the use of electronic media for learning presents an unprecedented opportunity for leveraging the computational mediums strengths for learning. However, existing software tools provide only primitive support for online knowledge-building discourse. Further work is needed in supporting coordinated use of disciplinary representations, discourse representations, and knowledge representations. The paper introduces the concept of representational guidance for discourse along with results of an initial study of this phenomenon in face to face situations. The paper then considers the requirements for supporting asynchronous online knowledge-building discourse, finding existing computer mediated communication tools to be particularly deficient in supporting artifact-centered discourse. A solution is proposed that coordinates discourse representations with disciplinary and knowledge representations.

Culture and computers: a review of the concept of culture and implications for intercultural collaborative online learning

Our research is aimed at a systematic investigation of phenomena in the nexus of culture, technology and learning. The basic premise of our research is that social affordances of technologies might vary along cultural dimensions. In this paper we present a brief overview of the concept of culture. We then discuss empirical findings demonstrating cultural effects on social behavior, communication and cognition and draw implications to online collaborative learning. In the last part of this paper, we present a selective review of research in cross-cultural human computer interaction.

Deictic Roles of External Representations in Face-to-face and Online Collaboration.

This research explores how shared, learner-constructed representations serve as resources for conversation in face-to-face and online situations. An important role of shared representations in collaborative learning is to facilitate the ease of reference to previously introduced ideas. Complex ideas are more easily expressed when their component ideas can be indicated with simple gestures. Yet gesture does not have the same immediacy in typical online learning environments. We examined the extent to which gestural deixis is inhibited online, and how shared representations serve as conversational resources in other ways. Results show that gesture was almost never used online, and was partially replaced with verbal deixis and direct manipulation of the shared representation. Verbal deixis almost always referenced ideas already in the focus of attention, posing a potential problem for reflection on prior information. These results suggest the importance of better integration between communicative tools and shared representations and the inclusion of prompts for reflection.

Automated Advice-Giving Strategies for Scientific Inquiry

We describe a prototype advisor for students using Belvedere, an environment for conducting discussions about scientific controversies. The advisor has two strategic components, syntactic and consistency-based. Syntactic strategies are based on structural and categorical patterns in argument representations constructed by the students, and suggest ways in which students can continue their inquiry. Consistency-based strategies check student-made links between pairs of statements against the pairwise relations specified between corresponding units in a knowledge base constructed by a teacher or expert, and identify information that may challenge or corroborate relationships proposed by the students.