Murat Perit Çakir

The Joint Organization of Interaction within a Multimodal CSCL Medium

In order to collaborate effectively in group discourse on a topic like mathematical patterns, group participants must organize their activities in ways that share the significance of their utterances, inscriptions, and behaviors. Here, we report the results of a ethnomethodological case study of collaborative math problem-solving activities mediated by a synchronous multimodal online environment. We investigate the moment-by-moment details of the interaction practices through which participants organize their chat utterances and whiteboard actions as a coherent whole. This approach to analysis foregrounds the sequentiality of action and the implicit referencing of meaning making—fundamental features of interaction. In particular, we observe that the sequential construction of shared drawings and the deictic references that link chat messages to features of those drawings and to prior chat content are instrumental in the achievement of intersubjectivity among group members’ understandings. We characterize this precondition of collaboration as the co-construction of an indexical field that functions as a common ground for group cognition. Our analysis reveals methods by which the group co-constructs meaningful inscriptions in the dual-interaction spaces of its CSCL environment. The integration of graphical, narrative, and symbolic semiotic modalities in this manner also facilitates joint problem solving. It allows group members to invoke and operate with multiple realizations of their mathematical artifacts, a characteristic of deep learning of mathematics.

Monitoring expertise development during simulated UAV piloting tasks using optical brain imaging

An accurate assessment of mental workload and expertise level would help improve operational safety and efficacy of human computer interaction for aerospace applications. The current study utilized functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIR) to investigate the relationship of the hemodynamic response in the anterior prefrontal cortex to changes in mental workload, level of expertise, and task performance during learning of simulated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) piloting tasks. Results indicated that fNIR measures are correlated to task performance and subjective self-reported measures; and contained additional information that allowed categorizing learning phases. Level of expertise does appear to influence the hemodynamic response in the dorsolateral/ventrolateral prefrontal cortices. Since fNIR allows development of portable and wearable instruments, it has the potential to be deployed in future learning environments to personalize the training regimen and/or assess the effort of human operators in critical multitasking settings.

A comparative analysis of global and national university ranking systems

Recent interest towards university rankings has led to the development of several ranking systems at national and global levels. Global ranking systems tend to rely on internationally accessible bibliometric databases and reputation surveys to develop league tables at a global level. Given their access and in-depth knowledge about local institutions, national ranking systems tend to include a more comprehensive set of indicators. The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic comparison of national and global university ranking systems in terms of their indicators, coverage and ranking results. Our findings indicate that national rankings tend to include a larger number of indicators that primarily focus on educational and institutional parameters, whereas global ranking systems tend to have fewer indicators mainly focusing on research performance. Rank similarity analysis between national rankings and global rankings filtered for each country suggest that with the exception of a few instances global rankings do not strongly predict the national rankings.

Tangram solved? Prefrontal cortex activation analysis during geometric problem solving

Recent neuroimaging studies have implicated prefrontal and parietal cortices for mathematical problem solving. Mental arithmetic tasks have been used extensively to study neural correlates of mathematical reasoning. In the present study we used geometric problem sets (tangram tasks) that require executive planning and visuospatial reasoning without any linguistic representation interference. We used portable optical brain imaging (functional near infrared spectroscopy - fNIR) to monitor hemodynamic changes within anterior prefrontal cortex during tangram tasks. Twelve healthy subjects were asked to solve a series of computerized tangram puzzles and control tasks that required same geometric shape manipulation without problem solving. Total hemoglobin (HbT) concentration changes indicated a significant increase during tangram problem solving in the right hemisphere. Moreover, HbT changes during failed trials (when no solution found) were significantly higher compared to successful trials. These preliminary results suggest that fNIR can be used to assess cortical activation changes induced by geometric problem solving. Since fNIR is safe, wearable and can be used in ecologically valid environments such as classrooms, this neuroimaging tool may help to improve and optimize learning in educational settings.

Reading’s Work in VMT

This chapter presents a systematics of chat interaction. Online chats are advantageous sites for examining the organization of social interaction as achieved through computer-mediated communication. Chats differ from talk-in-interaction since the composition and visual inspection of text and graphical objects by any given actor is not observable by other participants. These structural constraints on the organization of interaction require that actors deploy alternative procedures for achieving what turn taking achieves in talk-in-interaction.

The Integration of Mathematics Discourse, Graphical Reasoning and Symbolic Expression by a Virtual Math Team

Learning mathematics involves mastering specific forms of social practice. In this chapter, we describe socially situated, interactional processes involved with collaborative learning of mathematics online. We provide a group-cognitive account of mathematical understanding in an empirical case study of an online collaborative learning environment called Virtual Math Teams. The chapter looks closely at how an online small group of mathematics students coordinates their collaborative problem solving using chat, shared drawings and mathematics symbols. Our analysis highlights the methodic ways group members enact the affordances of their situation (a) to display their reasoning to each other by co-constructing shared mathematical artifacts and (b) to coordinate their actions across multiple interaction spaces to relate their narrative, graphical and symbolic contributions while they are working on open-ended mathematics problems. In particular, we identify key roles of referential and representational practices in the co-construction of deep mathematical understanding at the group level, which is achieved through methodic uses of the environment’s features to coordinate narrative, graphical and symbolic resources.

Interaction analysis of dual-interaction CSCL environments

In order to collaborate effectively in group discourse on a topic like mathematical patterns, group participants must organize their activities so that they have a shared understanding of the significance of their utterances, inscriptions and behaviors--adequate for sustaining productive interaction. The need for participants to coordinate their actions becomes particularly salient in dual-interaction environments, where, e.g., chat postings and graphical drawings must work together; analysts of such interactions must identify the subtle and complex ways in which meaning making proceeds. This paper considers the methodological requirements on analyzing interaction in dual-interaction environments by reviewing several exemplary CSCL studies. It reflects on the nature of social organization, grounding and indexicality that frame the interaction to be analyzed.

The organization of collaborative math problem solving activities across dual interaction spaces

In this paper we focus on the organization of activities that produce shared graphical representations on the whiteboard of a CSCL system with dual interaction spaces called VMT Chat, and the ways these representations are used in conjunction with chat postings as semiotic resources by interactants as they jointly make sense of and build upon each others mathematical statements.

URAP-TR: a national ranking for Turkish universities based on academic performance

This study describes the basic methodological approach and the results of URAP-TR, the first national ranking system for Turkish universities. URAP-TR is based on objective bibliometric data resources and includes both size-dependent and size-independent indicators that balance total academic performance with performance per capita measures. In the context of Turkish national university rankings, the paper discusses the implications of employing multiple size-independent and size-dependent indicators on national university rankings. Fine-grained ranking categories for Turkish universities are identified through an analysis of ranking results across multiple indicators.

The Organization of Graphical, Narrative and Symbolic Interactions

In order to collaborate effectively in group discourse on a topic like mathematical patterns, group participants must organize their activities so that they have a shared understanding of the significance of their utterances, inscriptions and behaviors—adequate for sustaining productive interaction. Some methodologies applied in CSCL research—such as the widespread coding-and-counting quantitative analysis genre—systematically ignore the sequentiality of actions and thereby miss the implicit referencing, which is essential to shared understanding. The VMT Project attempts to capture and analyze the sequential organization of references and inter-relationships among whiteboard inscriptions, chat postings, mathematical expressions and other elements of virtual math team activities in order to understand the mechanisms of group cognition.