Meaning making in CSCL: Conditions and preconditions for cognitive processes by groups Gerry Stahl The Math Drexel The Drexel

Meaning Making A central theme in CSCL literature A key process in collaborative learning Rarely investigated directly How do people make sense of what is taking place in an environment like the Virtual Math Teams sessions? How can researchers analyze meaning making in (synchronous) CSCL contexts? What are the conditions & preconditions necessary to support online meaning making? (see paper for another story)

How is meaning made? Co-construction &/or reference to: Lexical definitions Environmental resources Intentional continuities Topical responses Contextual relevancies Indexical frames

Face-to-face classroom familiar people and artifacts parallel collaboration

How is meaning made F2F? Co-construction &/or reference to: Lexical definitions — speech Environmental resources — physical artifacts Intentional continuities — human bodies Topical responses — turn taking Contextual relevancies — visually & physically shared local history Indexical frames — gesture, glance

How is collaboration accomplished? Physical individuals each work Maintain visual & auditory coordination Gestures to show (lack of) progress Gestures & turn taking to share Cooperation & sharing ensures that the group synthesizes what each individual did Cooperation & sharing ensures that each individual has learned what the group did

disembodied text background issues 1. Avr (8:21:46 PM): Okay, I think we should start with the formula for the area of a triangle 2. Sup (8:22:17 PM): ok 3. Avr (8:22:28 PM): A = 1/2bh 4. Avr (8:22:31 PM): I believe 5. pin (8:22:35 PM): yes 6. pin (8:22:37 PM): i concue 7. pin (8:22:39 PM): concur* 8. Avr (8:22:42 PM): then find the area of each triangle 9. Avr (8:22:54 PM): oh, wait 10. Sup (8:23:03 PM): the base and heigth are 9 and 12 right? 11. Avr (8:23:11 PM): no 12. Sup (8:23:16 PM): o 13. Avr (8:23:16 PM): that's two separate triangles 14. Sup (8:23:19 PM): ooo 15. Sup (8:23:20 PM): ok 16. Avr (8:23:21 PM): right 17. Avr (8:23:27 PM): i think we have to figure out the height by ourselves 18. Avr (8:23:29 PM): if possible 19. pin (8:24:05 PM): i know how 20. pin (8:24:09 PM): draw the altitude' 21. Avr (8:24:09 PM): how? 22. Avr (8:24:15 PM): right 23. Sup (8:24:19 PM): proportions? 24. Avr (8:24:19 PM): this is frustrating 25. Avr (8:24:22 PM): I don't have enough paper 26. pin (8:24:43 PM): i think i got it 27. pin (8:24:54 PM): its a 30/60/90 triangle 28. Avr (8:25:06 PM): I see 29. pin (8:25:12 PM): so whats the formula

VMT ConcertChat

How is meaning made online? Co-construction &/or reference to: Lexical definitions — textual vocabulary using IM conventions Environmental resources — digital & computational artifacts Intentional continuities — time-stamped IM handles Topical responses — recursive proposal bid/responses Contextual relevancies — visually persistent text & graphics Indexical frames — textual sequentiality

A CSCL Data Excerpt The students in this excerpt reflect on their meaning making in a previous session They have trouble in their meaning making in this session and must repair it & make it explicit This excerpt is hard for researchers to make sense of, so we must make our analytic meaning making explicit We have a record of the interaction that is adequate for analysis of online meaning making of a small group

Re-play the session Open the log file at: vmtwiki/teamb.xlshttp:// vmtwiki/teamb.xls Download the data file at: vmtwiki/teamb.jnohttp:// vmtwiki/teamb.jno Fire up the VMT Re-Player at: vmtplayerv1/vmtplayerv1.jsphttp://vmttest.mathforum.org/vmtChat/ vmtplayerv1/vmtplayerv1.jsp Excerpt: from 18/05/2006, 07:29:46 – 07:33:11

Lexical definitions Dictionary word meanings Local jargon Co-constructed objects and names Traditional understanding of meaning as reference to ideal objects, attributes as represented in individual minds Sentence in head mirrors fact in world

1424 Aznx That is theirs “that” “is” “theirs” But what is that and who are they and so what?

Environmental resources The group enacts the resources and affordances of its environment The technological medium, the presented problem text, the social setting VMT environment had chat, shared whiteboard (textboxes, drawings), wiki, awareness messages & graphical refs Now has lobby, multiple boards, more wiki, social networking in lobby

1420 bwang8 “point formula out with the tools so we don’t get confused”

Intentional continuities The online system associates each posting with a handle (person’s ‘name’) A posting may be closely related to a previous posting with the same handle The continuity of postings with a given handle is associated with the intentionality of a person A group of handles that has defined itself as a group can also have continuity, e.g., across sessions

Topical responses Conversation is often driven by “adjacency pairs” like question/answer, greeting/greeting, proposal/acceptance Online discourse is often driven by topical response pairs, or “uptakes” of a topic proposed by one person by another A pair can be (recursively) interrupted by another pair: clarifying, questioning, repairing

Contextual relevancies Often implicit reference to people, things, events in the local context Often referred to by citation, repetition of words The con-text (given with the text) is co- constructed by bringing items into the discourse context

Indexical frames The discourse creates and maintains a referential system in which indexicals & deictic terms (you, now, this, his, it, then) are resolved Relative to speaker (me, you) and tense (is, was, had been, will be)

How is meaning made? The meaning of the interaction is co- constructed through the building of a multi-dimensional web of contributions and references. The meaning made by the group consists in this subtle and complex implicit network of inter-relationships.

An implication for research The significance of an individual utterance is dependent upon its sequential relationship with many other utterances, artifacts, topics, etc. While it may be useful for certain narrow inquiries to code & count isolated individual utterances, in general, this misses their very meaning in the interaction.

An implication for technology Technological platforms for CSCL should provide flexible support for users to weave subtle webs of meaning Environments should provide ways for users to maintain different forms of persistency, referencing and awareness to support the co-construction and evolution of networks of meaning for collaboration, knowledge building and group cognition

An implication for theory In cases involving the accomplishment of group cognitive achievements, the determination of the significance of an individual utterance should be done at the group unit of analysis — as opposed, e.g., to viewing it as the expression of a mental representation at the individual unit of analysis Group cognition depends upon individual contributions, but the group phenomena are essential for CSCL, consisting in the shared meaning of the network of co-constructed contributions and references inscribed in the online venue

Acknowledgments & refs The VMT team for the conditions of research; NSF, Drexel, Math Forum for its preconditions. Lexical definitions — traditional philosophy Environmental resources — Stahl (JECR) Intentional continuities — Stahl (IJCIS) Topical responses — Stahl (RPTEL) Contextual relevancies — Suthers (06, 07) Indexical frames — Hanks (92); Zemel (07)

Links my website with papers on group cognition and analyses of VMT interactions — ppt (these slides) ppt read: Stahl (2006) Group Cognition, MIT Press. subscribe to: the International Journal of CSCL through your ISLS membership