Construction School

CSCW **** Conference November **-** New Orleans

Workshop 5. Analyzing collaborative activity Representing field research for understanding

collaboration Peter Jones, *****@****************.*** Cristina Chisalita, Vrije Universiteit

Analyzing and Representing the Building of Collaborative Knowing

Gerry Stahl *****.*****@***.******.***

I have been analyzing a data segment that I call A Moment of Collaboration for a couple of

years. This 30 second digital video clip has been transcribed as 28 verbal utterances. The data

comes from a middle school classroom episode where five students and a mentor are learning

how to use a rocket simulation to draw scientific conclusions for designing physical model

rockets. This particular excerpt is a highly collaborative one, in which the teacher sets up a

motivating discourse challenge, the shared understanding breaks down and the students interact

intensively to repair the interaction problem. The segment was initially very difficult to

understand largely, it turns out, because of the non-alignment of the references in the highly

elliptical utterances. However, it gradually yielded to micro-ethnographic analysis, focused

primarily on an analysis of the references in the group discourse.

In the process of interpreting the data, I developed a grounded theory of what I call Building

Collaborative Knowing. This theoretical framework incorporates concepts and approaches

from a broad spectrum of theories that are influential in CSCW and CSCL, such as situated

learning, activity theory, discourse analysis, artifact theory, contextual design, phenomenology,

hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnomethodology. I have attempted to integrate these concepts and

approaches into a coherent framework for analyzing, representing and understanding

collaborative work and learning.

Methodologically, the study of collaborative learning is drastically different from that of

individual learning, because the participants in a collaboration must make their changing

understandings visible to each other and therefore, potentially available to researchers.

Accordingly, what we need to represent are not postulated mental representations, but the

products of group interaction, such as the specialization of terminology or the generation of

written texts and other artifacts.

Philosophically, the intractable problem of defining meaning is addressed by taking the shared

situation of the collaborators their language, activity structures, culture, artifacts and physical

surroundings as a network of tacit meanings that are implicitly referenced by their discourse.

These shared meanings must be interpreted by the participating individuals. Thus, there is an

inter-play between the shared and evolving context of meaning and the personal perspectives

of the participants an inter-play that can be observed, represented and interpreted by

researchers.

Conceptually, my theory focuses on the social construction of reality through collaborative

interactions. A wealth of subtle verbal and non-verbal interaction mechanisms are used to

negotiate extensions to the group s abilities and knowing. Aspects of dynamic accepted group

knowing frequently coalesce into physical and symbolic artifacts, in which the ethereal

knowing that exists in spoken discourse gains a measure of persistence. The artifacts may be

tools or monuments that embody the knowing in their form and affordances; vocabulary can gain

new connotations, in which knowing is sedimented. The externalization of knowing in artifacts

preserves the knowing for future uses by the creators, as well as by others. However, new users

may need to learn how to interpret the encapsulated meanings just as the students in my data

had to gradually learn how to interpret the meanings designed into the computer simulation of

rockets. It is also possible for individuals to internalize transformed physical or symbolic

artifacts into cognitive artifacts.

In studying collaborative learning and CSCL, we are primarily interested in representing the

knowing that gets built. Because participants in collaboration must make visible i.e., represent

to each other their knowing as an on-going requirement of collaboration, this knowing is

potentially made visible for us as researchers as well. This is the methodological key. The

consequence is that representations of field work can be oriented to the products created by

collaborators: artifacts in the broad sense that includes physical, symbolic and cognitive

artifacts. For instance, in the discourse about the model rocket simulation, the analysis focuses

on the artifacts that are referenced in specific utterances. The collaboration is seen to hinge on

the details of the configuration of these artifacts. The terms that gain particular meaning in the

discourse ( compare, different ), together with the artifacts, classroom practices, etc. form the

meaningful situation for the students. Research on the students collaborative learning must be

concerned with this situational matrix of meaningful elements; it must represent the key elements

and their inter-relations. For instance, a concept map or semantic network might represent part of

this, with an activity structure diagram representing another part and a description of physical

and computational artifacts yet another.

My interest as a professor of information science who teaches HCI, CSCW and CSCL is how to

design, deploy and evaluate software media and artifacts that support the building of

collaborative knowing by groups in work-related and educational settings. In prototyping and

evaluating groupware, I try to build functionality to support the collaborative mechanisms

identified in my theory (like interpretive perspectives, knowledge negotiation and the

construction of artifacts) and to explore how users learn to understand this functionality in my

software artifacts.

I would be interested in sharing my case study of the middle school students and their rocket

simulation with CSCW practitioners in a workshop. I would also like to know how such an

audience responds to my work-in-progress theoretical framework and its implications for

representing field work.

(Stahl, 2000; Stahl, 2001; Stahl, 2002a; Stahl, 2002b; Stahl, 2002c; Stahl, 2002d; Stahl, 2002e; Stahl, 2003a; Stahl,

2003b; Stahl & Sanusi, 2001)

My recent publications related to this theme include:

Stahl, G. (2000) Collaborative information environments to support knowledge construction by

communities, AI & Society, 14, pp. 1-27. Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/journals/ai&society/.

Stahl, G. (2001) WebGuide: Guiding collaborative learning on the Web with perspectives,

Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1). Available at: www-

jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1 and

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/journals/jime2001/webguide.pdf.

Stahl, G. (2002a) The complexity of a collaborative interaction, In: Proceedings of ICLS 2002,

Seattle, WA. Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/conferences/2002/icls/ICLS_Stahl.pdf.

Stahl, G. (2002b) Contributions to a theoretical framework for CSCL, In: Proceedings of

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2002), Boulder, CO, pp. 62-71.

Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/conferences/2002/cscl2002/cscl2002.pdf.

Stahl, G. (2002c) Groupware goes to school, In: Proceedings of CRIWG 2002, La Serena, Chile.

Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/conferences/2002/criwg/Stahl_CRIWG_Paper.p

df.

Stahl, G. (2002d) Rediscovering CSCL. In T. Koschmann, R. Hall, & N. Miyake (Eds.), CSCL2:

Carrying Forward the Conversation, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ.

Available at: http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/journals/cscl2/cscl2.pdf.

Stahl, G. (2002e) Understanding educational computational artifacts across community

boundaries, Presented at ISCRAT 2002, Amsterdam, NL. Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/conferences/2002/iscrat/iscrat.pdf.

Stahl, G. (2003a) Building collaborative knowing: Elements of a social theory of learning. In J.-

W. Strijbos, P. Kirschner, & R. Martens (Eds.), What We Know about CSCL in Higher

Education, Kluwer, Amsterdam, NL. Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/journals/oun/oun_outline.pdf.

Stahl, G. (2003b) Negotiating shared knowledge in asynchronous learning networks, In:

Proceedings of HICSS 2002, Hawaii, HA. Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/conferences/2003/hicss/HICSS_Stahl.doc.

Stahl, G. (2003c) Building collaborative knowing: Elements of a social theory of learning, In:

Strijbos, Kirschner & Martens (Eds.) What We Know about CSCL in Higher Education,

Kluwer.

Stahl, G. & Sanusi, A. (2001) Multi-layered perspectives on collaborative learning activities in a

middle school rocket simulation project, Presented at the 22nd Annual Ethnography in

Education Research Forum, Philadelphia, PA. Available at:

http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/conferences/2001/ethnography2001/ethnograph

y.pdf.

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