Dillenbourg, P. (1999)
What do you mean by collaborative learning?
In P. Dillenbourg (Ed) Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches
P1-19
Oxford: Elsevier
Term - No shared usage. In the context leaning P reckons that it is best to think in terms of the following 3 dimension
1. scale of the situation ( group size and time scale) ,
nb CSCL in general refers to a group of more than 40.
4 sub heading but they are all, to an extent, interrelated.
Frameworks depend on scale psychology for small groups, social psychology for larger groups with sociology, ethnology, anthropology for larger scales. From this view cognitive and social have been distinct until notion of distributed cognition (KRO ? group dynamics – does the same apply),
notion of culture p2 now applied to describe the common grounds built by peers in interaction’ ‘ e.g. p3 ‘ if one talks about culture built by two subjects after an our of interaction the term culture acquires a cultural flavour’ but during transfer across different scales, theses concepts undergo deformations’
Dialogue with ones self – is it a form of collaboration ? self explanation versus explanation with others. Chapter 6 did not find any real differences p 3 ‘ authors did not find any real evidence that the interactivity of real explanation brings any benefit compared to self explanation’
Unit of analysis ‘ This evolution of research, where a group can be viewed as a unit or the individual as a group, indicates that the very notion of ‘scale’ actually changes: it moves from being a property of the object to a propoerrty of the observer, who selects the most appropriate unit of analysis’
2. What do we mean by learning ?
p4/5 “ The variety of uses of the word ‘learning’ reflect two distinct understandings of ‘collaborative learning’:
· is it a pedagogical method’ and therefore prescribed
· or a psychological process , the mechanism by which we learn.
D argues against both views
· take the ‘mechanism view’ need to perform activities which trigger learning whether as an individual or with peers. i.e. p5 ‘interaction among subjects generates extra activities ( explanation, disagreement, mutual regulation…) which trigger extra cognitive mechanisms ( knowledge elicitation, internalization, reduced cognitive load ….) …… However …… there is no guarantee that these mechanisms occur in any collaborative interactions. On the other hand, they do not occur only during collaboration. At some level of description – at least the neurone level- the mechanisms potentially involved in collaborative learning are the same as those potentially involved in individual cognition ( maybe KRO can argue against this?)
· take the method view ‘collaborative learning is not a method because of the low predictability of specific types of interactions’ ( KRO ? AI perspective)
‘In summary, the words ‘collaborative learning’ describe a situation in which particular forms of interaction among people are expected to occur, which would trigger learning mechanisms, but there is no guarantee that the expected interactions will actually occur. Hence a general concern is to develop ways to increase the probability that some types of interaction occur.’
These can be classified into 4 categories , 3 of which are addressed in the book.
Increasing the probability that interactions will occur
Set up the initial conditions.
P5 ‘ beyond a few main results, it appears that these conditions interact with each other in a complex way ( Dillenbourgh, Baker, Blaye & O’Malley, 1995) , the group heterogeneity effect will for instance be different for different tasks. Because of these multiple interactions, it is very difficult to set up initial conditions which guarantee the effectiveness of collaborative learning’ ( KRO but how do you specify effective?)
Over-specify the ‘collaboration’ contract with a scenario based on roles
P5 ‘ this approach turns collaborative learning into a method’
Scaffold productive interactions by encompassing interaction rules in the medium
Either by teacher or by technology e.g. using pre-defined buttons ‘do you agree?’ etc p6 ‘ However, the case study presented in chapter 3 shows that the interface constitutes a tool – semiotic and physical - that users have to appropriate and which affects their understanding of the task beyond simple facilitation/inhibition of particular types of interactions.
Monitor and regulate the interactions
Accomplished either by the
· Tutor role changes to one of facilitator ‘
· Technology providing minor pedagogical intervention’ widgets, analytics. Question in 1999 ‘ ‘whether peers are able to self-regulate their interaction with this type of feedback?’
3. what is referred to as collaboration’
the adjective collaboration concerns four aspects
· situation
· interaction
· learning mechanisms
· effects and the divergent views on how to measure it
situation
p7 ‘ intuitively a situation is termed ‘collaborative’ if peers are more or less at the same level, can perform the same actions, have a common goal and work together .’
· need to consider symmetry between learners, how much, how to manage it.
· raises questions about how to translate learning task into a shared goal. P8 ‘shared goals can only be partially set up at the outset of collaboration, they themselves have to be negotiated,…… goal discrepancies are often revealed through disagreements on action. . Through the negotiation of goals, agents not only develop shared goals, but they also become mutually aware of their shared goals. ‘
· also low division of labour ( cf cooperation when roles are shared out) is more likely to lead to more interaction and therefore more collaboration.
Interaction
· Operationalisation :P 8 where ‘ the degree of interactivity among peers is not defined by the frequency of the interactions but by the extent to which these interaction influence the peers’ cognitive processes. The degree of interweaving between reasoning and interaction is difficult to define operationally’
· Synchronicity: ‘doing something together implies synchronous communication while cooperation is often associated with asynchronous communication’ …….’ Is synchronicity less a technical parameter than a social rule. Is it a considerate meta-communicative contract?’ …. ‘if the medium breaks the conversational rules established for another medium, users create new ways of maintaining this subjective feeling of synchronicity of reasoning’
· Negotiation: collaborative interactions are negotiable e.g. negotiate how to act ( KRO possibly something I could measure?) ‘p10 ‘ the grounding process is the bottom layer of the negotiation process ( Dillenbourg & traum). This grounding +negotiation process , i.e. the way through which partners can build a shared solution, hence became a central concern in collaborative learning. Chapter 3 is an ambitious attempt to relate linguistic theory, developed by Clark and several colleagues, with the learning mechanism described by the cultural-historical psychology’.
‘The space for misunderstanding plays in grounding the same role as the space for negotiation in agreement. It constitutes an important element in modeling the dynamics of collaborative learning’ ‘ When two partners misunderstand, they have to build explanations, justify themselves, reformulate statements, and so on and all of these activities can lead to learning. Hence, in contrast with DAI and linguistic criteria, a collaborative learning situation should not eliminate ( if possible) the probability of misunderstanding ( in order to reduce the cost of communication) but instead leave the space for misunderstanding that is necessary for sustaining the subjects’ efforts to overcome miscommunication’
learning mechanisms
· work at the individual level of learning has identified: induction, cognitive load, self explanation, conflict ( Piaget). P11 Theses processes occur more often or more spontaneously in collaborative situations’
· Are there other learning processes that would be specific to social interactions? grounding and mutual modeling
Internalization ‘i.e. the transfer of tools from the social plane ( interaction with others) to the inner plane ( reasoning) Wertsch(1985) ( in a different context) claimed that an important step was ‘when the child becomes able to use the to-be-internalised concepts in conversation with his mother’ ‘Chapter 3 authors might rephrase Wersch’s findings by saying that the concept has been grounded’ another often quoted mechanism is appropriation ( Rogoff, 1990) by which an agent reinterprets his own action or utterance under the light of what his partner does or says next ( Fox, 1987)’ …. ‘An hypotheis mentioned in Chapter 7 is that mutual modeling implies some differential reasoning ( comparing what I do or know to what my partner does or knows) and that the perception of discrepncies with respect to one’s partner knowledge increases the awareness of one’s own knowledge’
Effects
P12 difficult to specify
Theories of collaborative learning
P13 ‘ At a first glance the situation generates interaction patterns, these interactions trigger cognitive mechanisms which in turn generate cognitive effects’
However such a linear causality is s simplification. Most relations are reciprocal. The elements just specified are all related to each other through bidirectional links.
Collaborative learning prospers when there is the necessity of continuous explanation to each other’
cf CF
