TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
Anders Mørch
TOOL 5100, 16.05.06 & 20.05.06
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• 4-5 foils from each of the previous presentations, slightly edited
• Tries to capture the important points, but strips off important context
• It requires the viewers to have read the presented articles, otherwise the points may not make sense
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• What is CSCW and groupware and their relation to CSCL
• Historical development
• Basic problems addressed
• Research areas and concepts
• Components of groupware
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Common task / goal
• Interface to a shared environment
• In addition, because there are more than one users:
– Division of labor, explicit role assignment
– Awareness of the others who are interacting with the shared environment (often not directly visible)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
computer science cognitive science
AI
HCI distributed systems distributed cognition communications
CSCW office info. systems sociology
CSCL cooperative design
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006
pedagogical design eductational context

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Ellis et al. identify the following three terms are basic for CSCW research and design:
– Communication
– Coordination
– Collaboration (sometimes divided into 2)
• Cooperation
• Collaboration
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• One of the approaches to CSCL we address in this course is to use asynchronous groupware for educational purposes
• What additional dimensions or characteristics would be necessary or convenient to add to the time/place matrix in order to better account for the factors that emerge when groupware is put in an educational context, such as classrooms?
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• CSCL: Computer Supported Collaborative
Learning
• A field concerned with collaborative learning and how it can be supported by computers
• The role of technology as “mediating artifact”, i.e. mediation becomes a key concern
• It has been compared to the role of language in conventional education (e.g. Vygotsky)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• L : What do people mean by Learning?
• CL : What do people mean by Collaborative
Learning?
• SCL : What do people mean by Support for
Collaborative Learning?
• CSCL : What do people mean by Computer
Support for Collaborative Learning?
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Collaborative learning has been criticized as having similar problems to those identified in problem-based learning and cased-based instruction (where learners work in groups)
– The problem of lurkers (free passengers)
– The complexity of modeling real situations
– Reaching closure and scaling up
– Process becomes more important than outcome
• Many of these issues have been addressed by improvements to CSCL and integration or alignment with related fields (CSCW, Instructional design, etc.)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• The nature of the collaborative task: e.g. physics problem solving vs. editing a school newspaper
• The nature of collaborators (peer, teacher-student, student-computer, etc.)
• The unit of analysis (individual, activity, group, classroom)
• The number of collaborators
• The previous relationship between collaborators
• The motivation of collaborators
• The setting of collaboration: classroom, workplace, home
• The time period of collaboration: from minutes to years
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Schmidt identifies socialization as a bottleneck to
Internet-based (distance) education , he believes it is not reachable by the current generation of virtual universities
• Do you agree that this is the factor impeding distance education institutions to further progress, or are there other factors that needs to be taken into account as well?
• Hint : Think of ways for “socialization” to be redefined for the network society so that it better aligns with the needs of distance learners, the technological possibilities they may have at their disposal, and the practices that can be expected to be adopted in the near future
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Computer-aided instruction (CAI)
– Since ca. 1960
• Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS)
– Since ca. 1970
• Logo-as-Latin
– Since ca. 1980
• Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
– Since ca. 1990
• Note : these fields are active today, but sometimes under new umbrellas and evolved to meet new needs
(e.g. instructional design, Lego/Logo, e-learning)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Psychological roots in behavioral science
• Focus on support for instruction in teaching situations
(e.g. classroom) with the computer
• The teacher’s role is to acquire knowledge and find efficient ways to share it with the students
• Often referred to as to as the “acquisition-transmission” metaphor of teaching and learning
• Today often associated with instructional design, such as reusable learning objects and domain-specific repositories that domain experts (e.g. teachers) can search to find teaching material
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• The focus here, as often in CAI, is on computer support for individual learning
• More emphasis on the learner than the teacher
• Psychological roots in cognitive science and Artificial
Intelligence (e.g. Newell & Simon, 1972)
• The computer provides a cognitive model of human information processing, representing novice and expert problem solving, and track performance
• An ITS provides expert advice to students as they solve problems in well-defined domains (e.g. physics, math, medical procedures)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Instead of learning by being taught, this approach focuses on “learning by doing”
• Psychological roots in the developmental psych of Piaget and the philosophy of education of Dewey
• Constructionism is a term that is often used as a label for this approach
• The student “constructs” by creating and running microworlds programmed in Logo (Papert, 1980)
• Later efforts have extended this to higher level languages, e.g. using Lego/Logo (e.g. Resnick, 1990)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Roots in several fields in the social sciences and socially oriented theories of learning (going back to Vygotsky, G H Mead, and others)
• Focus on overarching concerns that attempts to bridge the individual-social gap in interaction
• Common perspectives and sources of influence:
– Social constructivism
– Socio-cultural theories
– Situated and shared cognition
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Effects
• Conditions
– Group heterogeneity
– Individual prerequisites
– Task features
• Interactions
– Explanation
– Control
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Tool for analysis
– Interaction analysis
– Analyzing and modeling collaborative learning practices, such as ..
• Negotiation
• Argumentation
• Mediating artifact
– This is not addressed in this article, but comes up in later articles
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Concepts of collaboration
Collaboration can be considered as a special form of interaction .
Engeström (1992) has elaborated a three-level notion of developmental forms of interaction; coordination, cooperation, and reflective communication.
According to another definition Collaboration can be defined as a process of participating in knowledge communities . As pointed out by
Brufee (1993, p.3) collaboration is "a reculturative process that helps students become members of knowledge communities whose common property is different from the common property of the knowledge communities they already belong to".
Collaboration as seen as a special form of interaction , and collaboration as a process of participation in collective activities ("working together"), include the idea of achieving shared goals. It appears that we can--that perhaps we must--analyze collaborative activities on both micro and macro levels.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Why has CSCL been so slowly adopted? As proposed by Kling
(1991) in the context of CSCW, it might be that the meanings attached to collaboration are too positively loaded, or the collaborative settings are interpreted too narrowly referring only to positive phenomenon. This may restrict one from seeing that collaborative situations are also full of contradictions, competition, and conflicts.
• On the other hand , technology offers the kind of potentials for learning which are very different from those available in other contexts. One self-evident benefit is, that computer networks break down the physical and temporal barriers of schooling by removing time and space constraints. The delay of asynchronous communication allows time for reflection in interaction. Making thinking visible by writing should help students to reflect on their own and others' ideas and share their expertise.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• collaborative use of technology and collaborative technology are different. Imagine a pair of students working at the computer running a simulation program in physics. The simulations on the screen can help the students to collaborate, by creating a referential anchor, a point of shared reference
(Crook, 1994). This referential anchor can function as a
"concrete" shared representation, can support the negotiation of meanings, and mediate students’ communication activities in their development of reciprocal understanding
(Hakkarainen, et al., 1998; Järvelä, et. al., 1999). In this case, the technology, the software developed for the individual user, is utilized in creating and establishing collaborative activities through its use as anchoring support.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• One of the major challenges of CSCL, or educational technology in general, is scaling-up; how to expand and implement the good practices that researcher and teachers have found and developed.
• Bielaczyc (2001) has presented a parallel idea.
According to her, one of the key factors in successful implementation of CSCL is to build an appropriate social infrastructure around the technical infrastructure.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• CSCL can presently be characterized as consisting of three methodological traditions: experimental, descriptive and iterative design.
• Many empirical studies follow the dominant experimental paradigm that compares an intervention to a control condition in terms of one or more variables.
• The ethno-methodological tradition (exemplified in CSCL by
Koschmann et al.
, 2003; Koschmann et al.
, 2005; Roschelle,
1996; Stahl, 2006) is more suited for descriptive case analyses.
• The iterative design tradition is exemplified by Fischer &
Ostwald (2005), Lingnau, et al. (2003) and Guzdial et al.
(1997)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Lipponen: To strengthen a set of coherent foundations for CSCL. This task is absolutely worthwhile of striving for, but also be a very demanding task
• Stahl et al argued that CSCL requires a focus on the meaning-making practices of collaborating groups and on the design of technological artifacts to mediate interaction. Whether this focus can, will or should lead to a coherent theoretical framework and research methodology for CSCL remains to be seen.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• The paper (F5) present a model of learning as a social process
• Individual minds in relation to socio-cultural
• Framework for the design of CSCL-SW (KBE)
• 5 theories of learning (Koschmann)
– The paper incorporating insights from these theories/philosophies
• Multiple phases constitute a cycle => increasingly complex questions to be posed
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
The Idea of a Computer System to Support the
Knowledge-Building Process(1)
• A KBE should:
– go beyond a single-purpose system
– retain a record of the knowledge that was built up
• And it should therefore probably be:
– “built on asynchronous, persistent collaborative technologies and be deployed on the Internet as a Web-based environment”
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Collaboration script is a set of instructions specifying how the group members should interact and collaborate to solve a problem. O’Donnell & Dansereau 1992)
– Internal or external representations
• A CSCL-script is a computational representation of a collaborative script
• A general modelling language for formalising collaboration scripts is missing.
• No tool for CSCL practitioners to create, reuse, integrate, and customize CSCL scripts.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Existing learning process modelling language IMS-
LD provides insufficient support to model groupbased, synchronous collaborative learning activities.
• Some attempts have been done to extend IMS-LD, but still no good solutions.
• The aim for the research work presented in this paper is to develop a scripting language for formalising CSCL scripts and exploring their potential types of usage and system support possibilities
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
CSCL Scripting language (from Miao et al., 2005)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Belief Mode
– Concerned with what we and other people believe or ought to believe
– Our response to this mode is to agree or disagree, to present arguments and evidence for or against, to express and try to resolve doubts
– Ex. ideas that presented for consideration
•
Design Mode
– Concerned in the usefulness, adequacy, improvability and development potential ideas
– The essence is IDEA IMPROVEMENT
– Ex. There is no ultimate computer because with each advancement new possibilities arise for further advances
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Learning by Design (developed at Georgia
Tech.)
• Project-Based Science ( developed at the
University of Michigan)
• Problem-Based Learning (developed at
Southern Illinois University)
• Knowledge Building (developed at Ontario
Institute of Study in Education/University of Toronto)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Problem-Based Learning
– Learners are expected to determine what information they need to solve the problem and work together to achieve the solution with a little direct help from the instructor.
– Is often treated as synonymous with project-based learning.
– Originated in the medical school to solve problem encounter in practice & Grows out in different tradition and focus
– Disadvantage: Is not focused on tangible end product. The end product is a problem solution – purely conceptual artifact.
• Knowledge Building
– Defined as “creatively work with ideas that really matter to the people doing the work”
– work directly aimed at creating and improving broadly significant theories, problem formulations, interpretations and the like.
– Is the least bound to a particular activity structures and it is not confined to particular occasions or subjects but pervades (or spread through) mental life – and they claim in and out of school!!
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Knowledge building
May be defined as the production and continual improvement of ideas of value to a community, through means that increase the likelihood that what the community accomplishes will be greater than the sum of individual contributions and part of broader cultural efforts. [Bereiter
& Scardamalia, 1987, 1989, 1993].
• Knowledge construction
Is evidenced by the accretion (accumulation) of interpretations on an information base that is simultaneously expanded by information seeking and transformations.
[Suthers, 2005]
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
•
Computer Support Intentional Learning
Environment (CSILE)
• Knowledge Forum
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
– The aim is to study how different practices of CSCL learning influenced the epistemological nature of student’s inquiry.
– The focus is in examining the condition for which CSCL facilitates higher-level practice inquiry in different classroom cultures (
Canadians and Finnish CSILE groups).
– Can be abstracted as from potentially culture-specific factors
– It is based on a conceptual, qualitative and quantitative analysis
– It does not give direct information about psychological process involved in CSILE use
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Qualitative analysis of notes stored in CSILE database
• Five steps scale research questions classification
– Isolated Facts
– Partially Organized Facts
– Well-organized Fact
– Partial explanation
– Explanation
• Production was made at the level of ideas and several observation
• Interaction was analyzed through the content of their written communication with the use of CSILE network
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
•
Canadian Classroom A
– has prominent role of a explanation-oriented process of inquiry
– Higher proportion of explanation-seeking research questions, explanatory level of scientific information and intuitive knowledge
•
Canadian Classroom B and Finnish
– Focused on processing factual knowledge and empirical generalization
– Low proportion of explanation-oriented inquiry
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
- All students, regardless of their individual cognitive competencies, might remain at more elementary level without the guidance of a teacher
- Students needs a great deal of pedagogical and epistemological guidance to participate at a process of level of inquiry analogous to scientific inquiry
- There is a need of the teacher to have a pre-service function and conceptual understanding of advanced processes of knowledge-seeking inquiry
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Emphasis on describing in detail the “wholeness” of what is going on in a particular activity or situation.
• Video-based Interaction Analysis (Jordan and Henderson,1995), consists of :
– the in-depth micro-analysis of how people interact with one another,
– their physical environment,
– and the documents, artifacts, and technologies in that environment.
• Jordan (1992) used video data to explicate how authoritative knowledge is distributed in two highly computerized settings:
– an airline operations room, where knowledge is continually jointly produced
– and a hospital setting, where it is vested in the technology and the physician.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06

• The ability to document nonverbal behavior and interpersonal communication (facial expressions and emotions).
• It preserves the activity as it’s unfolding, so that the data material can be validated by other researchers.
– Viewing it several times
– Comments from others
• Captures multiple views of a situation.
• Enables the researcher to participate in the activity
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06

• Do the recordings manipulate the reality?
• Note: without an exceptionally wide-angled lens, no camera can record all activity in a classroom
• Capturing too much can also be a problem
• Confidentiality can be a problem
• Time consuming and expensive
– Large amount of data
– Expensive equipment
• Subjects may get influenced by the presence of a camera
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• The literature about distance education is dominated by enthusiastic studies and accounts
• But some studies report the importance of students’ isolation in distance education course
• Original research question was: ”How do the students in B555 overcome their feelings of isolation in a virtual classrom to create the sense of a community of learning?”
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
Three different techniques was used :
Observation : Online classrom discussion was observed to grasp how the instructor facilitated the dialogue among the students. And it was observed how each student interacted with the Web site
Interview : Was conducted immediately after the students had finished their tasks on the Web
Document review : Examination of various types of documents realted to B555, including the course syllabus, reading assigment, and the cataog`s course description. And the instructor´s personal log
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• From the interviews and the observations it appared that there were two foci of fustrations among the students, the first was on the technological problems and the second was on the course content and the instructur`s practices in managing her communications with the students
• The Instructor belived that she had reduced the students fustrations during the semester, but this was shown not to be true, as the student only had expressed some of their fustrations to the Instructor
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Most articles about distance education emphasize the positive aspects
• Only a few scholars examine important limitations and pervasive problems
• According to the authors is time to seriously consider the actual experience among students in distance education courses an to critically discuss the phenomena of distance education
• It is also question if technology can improve pedagogy with little special effort
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• The objective of the study was to intensivly examine the patterns of female and male students`participation in computer-supported collaborative learning in two classrooms
• There are significant differences between male and female students in their attitudes towards, knowledge about, or use of computers (Durnell & Thompson, 1997,
Hakkarainen et.al, 2000, Scott, Cole &Engel, 1992)
• Male students are generally more enthusiastic about the use of information and communication technologies
• Female students experience computer phobia or tend to minimize the use of their computers
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Participants; Classrooms A and B
Classroom A, 19 female, 9 male
Classroom B, 10 female, 20 male
• Study material; The CSILE database
Qualitative analysis of the students’ written comments posted to the database within one academic year
The comments was first partitioned into ideas
Then the comments were classified according to type of communicative idea (agreement, neutral or disagreement)
Communicative ideas within a comment were analyzed by specifying the object of inquiry: Linguistic form, research question, research methods, information, explanation, other or unspecified
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Patterns of interaction
The analysis indicated that CSILE students`network of interaction was rather dense in both of the classroms
Also indicated that the students preferred to communicate within their own gender group.
This was stronger in classroom A than classroom
B
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Capture speech, gestures, use of artefacts (’social and material), distributed activity…
• Individual/Collective/Relations
• How detailed trajectories…
• … in relation to time, space, semiotic layers?
• Multiple levels (’zooming’)
• Transcriptions
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• ”The black box of peer group learning”
(Kumpulainen, K., & Mutanen, M., 1999).
• The Phenomenon? Meaning making, new type activity, negotiations…
• Unit of analysis? Episodes?
• When/How can we make assumptions and claims from qualitative data? Corpus? Theory
(abduction)? From review of literature?
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• In the same way we have methods for evaluation we have methods for design
• I have chosen to put different approaches to design under the umbrella of “design techniques” and to focus on them in detail
• There are other ways to approach design, some of them more general, others specific
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Scenario-based design
• Empirical-based design
• Participatory design
• Theory-based design
• Evolutionary design
• The techniques are partially overlapping and are often used in combination
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
(also called iterative design, prototyping)
• Suggest answers to empirical questions
• Involving real users in order to support their needs, not the needs of system developers,
• Iterations of system building and evaluation with users
• Evaluation is often done in “usability labs”, but can also be done using other means
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• User participation in the early phases of system development
• Users are considered equal partners with developers
• Often referred to as “Scandinavian approach” to system development (democratic design)
• Understand what goes on at the workplace and in the interaction between workers
• Technology is “mediating artefact” alongside other artefacts such as profession-oriented languages
• Mutual learning and use of low-fidelity prototyping techniques
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Develop a new system based on an existing one
• This is often the default approach for many developers, even without being aware of it, because many developers have a repertoire of tools to build from
• Start from something that already works and available to low level inspection and code reuse
• Find out what can be improved and add the improvements to the existing working system
• Can be used in different ways
– within one system (e.g. extending an open source system);
– from one generation of system to another (e.g. product families);
– and from one technology to another (mock up to computer display)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Separate foils :
– The Learning Sciences
– CSILE/KF
– Projects: A KB perspective
– Core elements
– Screen dumps of Knowledge Forum (should understand how the system is used by students)
– Scaffolds (check this in particular)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Movements in the Learning Object Economy
– Historical summary showing various definitions and criticizing them
• Towards a Concept of the Reusable Learning Object (LO)
– Setting the principles of LO foundation
• Creating Learning Objects
– LOs and principles of learning intent and reusability
• Developing Learning Objects
– Conceptualization and Collaborative development
• Standards and Specifications for Developing Learning Objects
– Standards enables genuinely sharable and reusable content objects
• Learning Objects and Electronic Books
– Differences between e-books and material books
– The role of LOs in the construction of e-books
• Conclusion
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Draft Standard for Learning Object Metadata v6.1:
– LO is defined as any entity, digital or non-digital. Non-digital objects such as computer hardware and digital objects like images enjoy the same conceptual status, thereby making it impossible to use the term
Learning Object in a meaningful way.
• Wiley, David. A. (2002):
– ”LO is any digital resource that can be reused to support learning.” a broad characterization classifying every digital asset as a LO.
• L'Allier, James J. (1997):
– ”LO is the smallest independent structural experience that contains an objective, a learning activity and an assessment."
• Based on these foundational principles LO can be defined as:
– A Learning Object is an independent and self-standing unit of learning content that is predisposed to reuse in multiple instructional context
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• LOs are the most meaningful and effective way of creating content for elearning
• The current definitions and practices of LOs are confusing and arbitrary
They will never be able to avail themselves of the flexibility, scalability and speed offered by information technology
• Necessary with a commonly accepted, accurate and functionally effective definition of a LO
• Establish a concept of the LO that clearly lays out the principle basis on which it is founded
• Need to reengineer the design and development process of LOs
• Developers should embrace a multidisciplinary and cooperative model of development
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• The pilot version FLE2 (now 3) is cross platform and HTML based for end users
• The ITCOLE/ Fle3 environment will contain several tools:
– Virtual Web Top – storing and sharing documents, java applets etc.
– KB module – facilitates between-user interaction, multiple discussions
– Jam session – encourages free flow of ideas allows experimentation
– Meeting room – collaborative multi-user applications (whiteboard, chat etc.)
– Library - store, publish and browse diff. learning materials
• Provide external structures that help a student to participate in expert like processing of knowledge without increasing the cognitive processing load.
– Participation in depth learning, scaffolding the users
– Tools for students to record and visually represent their activity
– Challenge: design interface helping users to manage knowledge produced
• Important challenge of ITCOLE is to design tools that help to represent progress of discussions by graphical means.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• The objective for ITCOLE is to build a pedagogical interface for educational use
• The objective can be divided into three main aims:
– Scalability – universal access for different user/browser configurations
– Usefulness - full set of features to enable collaborative KB - system functionality
– Usability – user friendly and attractive graphical design – flexible and customizable
• Some screenshots from Fle3: http://fle3.uiah.fi/screen_shots/index.html
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
Goal / intentions
• To integrate pedagogical agents with
• collaborative environments (synchronous and asynchronous)
Findings/Contributions
(1) A design space for classifying pedagogical agents: presentation, intervention, task, and pedagogy,
(2) A series of attempts that shows it is possible to take advantage of statistical information in collaborative learning environments without detailed student modeling,
(3) An approach to represent ‘common attitude’ and principles associated with collaborative performance, and
(4) customizable agents to address the imprecision dilemma associated with providing agent-based assistance in poorly structured knowledge domains.
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• A distributed learning environment has a set of “rules” and “roles” for how to interact.
These rules and roles are not straight forward for most participants. The “player” need to learn at least one role in order to successfully participate e.g. to be a collaborator.
• When this set of rules-and-roles is internalized and shared among the other users, it may improve participation and collaboration.
• If software agents are allowed to reason with these representations, conceptual awareness can be trigged by a computational mechanism .
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Inspiration from related work (evolutionary design)
– Teamwave Workplace
– Future Learning Environment (FLE)
• Empirical studies
– Wizard of Oz technique (simulation experiment)
– Trials in high schools (design experiment)
• Iterative design (integrating agents with the systems and evaluating the results)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
CoPAS wizards
Tool Agent
Message alternatives
Message actually used
23 (12 new) 82.5%
Domain Agent 19 (6 new) 63%
Collaboration Agent 15 (1 new) 86.5%
All wizards 57 (19 new) 77%
Number of messages sent to all five groups
42
34
56
132
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
Four dimensions which are relevant to adopt:
1) Presentation
2) Intervention
3) Task
4) Pedagogy a) collaboration principles b) knowledge building
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
(Dourish & Bellotti, 1992)
(Mørch, Jondahl & Dolonen, 2005)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Classroom instruction need to be centred around students’ active learning and take into account research that demonstrates that students’ prior knowledge is significant factor for active learning
• That the focus on students’ work should transcend the declarative to include procedural and strategic knowledge – reason and reflect meta-cognitively on their own learning and the construction and evaluation of scientific knowledge
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• This requires a focus on
– How evidence is used in science for the construction of explanations
– Evaluate the selection of evidence and the construction of explanations
• Debate and argumentation around competing theories, methodologies and aims are central to doing and learning science
– This requires that students engage in practicing and using this form of discourse in a range of structured activities
– This will support the social construction of knowledge, exposing student thinking and enabling its critical evaluation by the teacher, the student and his/her peers
• This is central to CSCL
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Argumentation as a war that seeks to establish a winner, or ..
• as a social and collaborative process necessary to solve problems and advance knowledge
(e.g. Toulmin – warrants and backings used to make claims are shaped by the guiding conceptions and values of the field/community)
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006

TOOL5100: CSCL
Summary spring 06
• Encourage and sustain argument oriented discourse
(warrant, claim, backings, qualifiers)
• Content oriented?
• These two aspects are intertwined
– [arguments are more general and the content is more specific]
• Combination of multiple techniques to foster sustained argumentation practices – such as student presentations, small-group discussions, teaching argumentation skills and discourse
• How can CSCL take these issues into account?
A. Mørch, 16.05.2006