Timothy Koschmann

CSCL: Theory and Practice of an Emerging Paradigm.

Contents: Preface. T. Koschmann, Paradigm Shifts and Instructional Technology: An Introduction. P.J. Feltovich, R.J. Spiro, R.L. Coulson, J. Feltovich, Collaboration Within and Among Minds: Mastering Complexity, Individually and in Groups. S.V. Goldman, Mediating Microworlds: Collaboration on High School Science Activities. T. Koschmann, A.C. Kelson, P.J. Feltovich, H.S. Barrows, Computer-Supported Problem-Based Learning: A Principled Approach to the Use of Computers in Collaborative Learning. D. Morrison, B. Goldberg, New Actors, New Connections: The Role of Local Information Infrastructures in School Reform. C.M. Neuwirth, P.G. Wojahn, Learning to Write: Computer Support for a Cooperative Process. R.D. Pea, Seeing What We Build Together: Distributed Multimedia Learning Environments for Transformative Communications. M. Riel, Cross-Classroom Collaboration: Communication and Education. J. Roschelle, Learning by Collaborating: Convergent Conceptual Change. M. Scardamalia, C. Bereiter, Computer Support for Knowledge-Building Communities. E. Soloway, J.S. Krajcik, P. Blumenfeld, R. Marx, Technological Support for Teachers Transitioning to Project-Based Science Practices. J. Kolodner, M. Guzdial, Effects with and of CSCL: Tracking Learning in a New Paradigm.

Conducting Video Research in the Learning Sciences: Guidance on Selection, Analysis, Technology, and Ethics

Focusing on expanding technical capabilities and new collaborative possibilities, we address 4 challenges for scientists who collect and use video records to conduct research in and on complex learning environments: (a) Selection: How can researchers be systematic in deciding which elements of a complex environment or extensive video corpus to select for study? (b) Analysis: What analytical frameworks and practices are appropriate for given research problems? (c) Technology: What technologies are available and what new tools must be developed to support collecting, archiving, analyzing, reporting, and collaboratively sharing video? and (d) Ethics: How can research protocols encourage broad video sharing and reuse while adequately protecting the rights of research participants who are recorded?

Dewey's contribution to the foundations of CSCL research

In this paper, I review two studies (Roschelle, 1996; Baker, Hansen, Joiner, & Traum, 1999) which I believe to represent paradigmatic examples of CSCL research. I offer a critique of these studies based on the theory of inquiry developed by the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. Inquiry, for Dewey, represented an exceedingly broad category of activity of which joint problem solving is a special case. I conclude by proposing a description of what I think research in CSCL is, or at least should be, about. This description can be used to distinguish what is done in this field from traditional research in education on learning outcomes, research based on classical information processing theory, and conventional research on social interaction.

Toward a dialogic theory of learning: Bakhtin's contribution to understanding learning in settings of collaboration

I propose here a new theoretical framework for understanding learning as a socially-grounded phenomenon based the writings of the Russian philologist, M. M. Bakhtin. Bakhtins writings on the dialogic nature of all texts provide the basis for a new view of language, knowledge, and learning. From this perspective, learning is seen as the process of multiple voices coming into contact, both within and across speaker-produced utterances. Examples are provided of two types of studies based on such a theory of learning: studies of the appropriation of a social language and studies of speech genres. I conclude by recounting the potential advantages of adopting dialogicality as a conceptual basis for ongoing work in CSCL.

Learner Articulation as Interactional Achievement: Studying the Conversation of Gesture

Learner articulation, studied under a variety of names (e.g., self-explanation, self-directed, and generative summarization), has been shown to contribute to new learning. Whereas prior research has focused on measuring the effects of various forms of articulation on learning outcomes, this article focuses on how such articulation may be accomplished, moment to moment and turn by turn, in learning settings. It documents some of the ways in which participants use their bodies and, in particular, their hands while displaying what they know. It presents fine-grained analyses of 3 videotaped fragments of naturally occurring interaction among medical teachers and students participating in tutorial meetings in a problem-based learning curriculum. Within these 3 exhibits evidence was found of recipient design with regard to gesture production and recipient response with reference to its performance. Also found was evidence of gesture reuse as a mechanism for cohesion across turns at talk and as a display of mutual understanding. This article represents a preliminary step toward a more general program of research focusing on sense-making practices in learning settings. Extending an understanding of how such practices are accomplished interactionally is a crucial step toward eventually being able to give an adequate account of what makes any exemplary form of instruction effective.

How Do People Learn

We are concerned with how learning and instruction are accomplished as interactional achievements, that is the practical details of how participants actually go about doing learning and instruction on a moment-to-moment basis. We focus in this chapter on what we term a problematizing move, that is a form of social action that has the effect of calling something previously held to be so into doubt. Drawing conceptually and methodologically on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, we examine problematizing moves in two settings—a problem-based learning (PBL) tutorial meeting conducted face-to-face (F2F) and a distributed PBL (dPBL) meeting mediated through a chat interface. We note that even with the constraints on communication imposed by the mediating technology, the methods employed by members to problematize a problem resemble those seen in F2F meetings. We argue that contrasting members’ methods across settings employing different forms of communicative mediation can be instructive with regard to understanding both the effects of the mediation and the nature of the methods themselves.

‘Put your fingers right in here’: Learnability and instructed experience

Examining a fragment of interaction that occurred during a surgery at a teaching hospital, we explore how particular instructed experiences are produced for two trainees, a surgeon in the residency program and a medical student in a surgical clerkship. We are concerned with what is produced as learnable in each case. Stated slightly differently, we are interested in the ways in which the attending surgeon uses demonstrations as instruction and the ways in which recipients of that instruction, in this case the resident and the clerk, respond with enactments of those demonstrated actions. The recipients of this kind of instruction participate in a form of experiential learning in which they enact their own versions of the instructor’s demonstrated actions to be observed and assessed by the instructor. These enactments provide learners with experiential access to the instructor’s demonstrated actions. They are designed to be experiences that learners may draw upon to make experientially warranted claims at some later time.

Theory presentation and assessment in a problem‐based learning group

In this study, we apply the procedures and assumptions of ethnomethodological conversation analysis to analyze a segment of interaction in a problem‐based learning (PBL) meeting. In the segment, one member of the group presents a theory pertaining to the case under study. Before it is accepted or rejected, the same speaker presents a second theory to which other group members react with objections and disaffiliative laughter. The presenter consequently rejects the second theory and uses this rejection as a basis for returning to and implicitly accepting the first. Theory presentation and assessment are an integral part of the PBL group process of moving discursively from case history and symptoms to diagnosis and treatment. We observe that the presentation of a theory makes relevant a variety of sequential activities through which participants in instructional activities of this sort come to accept or discard the theory. Implications for teaching and tutorial practice are presented.

Bridging the gap between object-oriented and logic programming

A description is given of an interface that was developed between Loops and Xerox Quintus Prolog. Loops is an extension to the Xerox AI environment to support object-oriented programming; Xerox Quintus Prolog is a version of Prolog that runs on Xerox Lisp machines. Such a bridge enables all the support tools of both environments to be accessed, and degradation of performance that occurs when one language is implemented top of another is avoided. The interface has three layers. At the lowest level, a set of Prolog predicates gives the Prolog programmer access to Loops objects. This lowest level is the bridge from Prolog to Loops. At the next level, programming tools in the Loops environment let object methods be defined in Prolog. At the highest level, the Prolog programmer can treat Prolog clauses as Loops objects that can be manipulated outside the Prolog database. Each layer can be used independently.<<ETX>>

CSCL, Argumentation, and Deweyan Inquiry

This collection represents something of a departure from prior work on argumentation. There is, for example, an established literature concerned with how argumentation is structured (cf., Anderson, et al., 1997; Eemeren et al., 1996). There are related research traditions devoted to developmental aspects of argumentation (e.g., Felton & Kuhn, 2001; Stein & Bernas, 1999) and exploring the relationship between argumentation and abstract reasoning skills (e.g., Chinn & Anderson, 1998; Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton, 1997; Stein & Miller, 1993). Research on argumentation within the CSCL community, however, has had a somewhat different orientation. As reflected in the chapters here and elsewhere,2 CSCL researchers have focused on (1) how argumentation can be exploited as a site for learning generally and (2) how learning accomplished in this way might be augmented using technology. The goal, therefore, is one of fostering productive argumentation in instructional settings. Several of the chapters, however, testify to the difficulties attendant to facilitating such forms of argumentation among learners.