Som Naidu & Sanna Jarvela (2006)
Analyzing CMC content for what?
Computers and Education, 46,1, 96-103
Review of the articles in the special edition
What needs to be understood?
Leads to the question of what constitutes collaborative learning and the processes that determine its success
What is it? P99 ‘Collaboration involves sharing information, understanding, experience and expertise. There can be many types of collaborative activity which may manifest in several ways while serving many different functions. For example collaborative could serve as a ‘ culturative process which helps participants to become members of a knowledge community that are different from knowledge communities they already belong to’
KRO Why is collaborative learning desirable ? –CF – an approach to learning based on doing something and sharing the doing with peers
P97 ‘ provides a natural setting for self explanation and explaining to others’
P97 ‘Can interaction be more rich in the service of learning when it is not spatial ( in terms of teacher-student interaction or discourse) but virtual, asynchronous, multimediated and not linear?’
‘What are the interactions for supporting productive joint engagement and shared understanding?’
Collaborative traits . Authors claim that these are learned behaviours p100 ‘ characteristics of this trait include a willingness to share, demonstration of respect towards alternative views and dispositions, and the ability to listen carefully and attentively (Koschmann, 1996).
Methodological considerations
P98 ‘ Strategies for the analysis of a particular type of CMC application will have to be carefully selected or developed in alignment with the purposes that the conversation is designed to engender. Furthermore, care needs to be exercised against over analyzing CMC content, or attempting to apply overly reductionist strategies to the study os a rather complex communication channel ( Hemelo-Silver, 2003; Schrire, 2005)
Articles in the special edition identified the following as important steps
P98
· ‘Determination of a unit of analysis
· Development of a segmentation procedure
· Determination of the reliability of the segmentation procedure
· Development of coding categories and rules and
· Determination of the reliability of the coding strategies’
What kinds of RQs
What are successful and critical attributes of CSCL environments
What are the successful and critical attributes of collaborative learners?
How can one generate and engender these ‘attributes and behaviours’ in CSCL environments
Need to consider whether the process of collaboration is facilitated or directed
Theoretical frameworks
P99 ‘strategies should have a strong theoretical base’ ‘ It is arguable that a search for a theoretical base for research into computer mediated communications is rather far fetched and unrealistic. After all CMC is not much more than writing short letters via networked computers. Yet, it is different ……. Because it has a unique set of forms, norms and conventions’
P100 ‘During the recent years there has been a lively discussion on whether we should follow an individual or social perspectives on activity and should we conceptualize the current understanding on situative or cognitive approaches ( e.g. Anderson, Greeno, Reder and Simon, 2000). Through the influence of sociocultural and situated cognition theories, it has been recognized that individual learners are also influenced by social values and context in which the learning takes place. Cognition and social interaction is no more a separate variable or a distinct factor, which can be applied in explanation of an individual readiness to act or learn – but reflective of the social and cultural environment’
Conclusion
Complex interaction of cognitive, social, emotional, motivation
Need p101 ‘data from multiple sources’ e.g. Schrire(2005) –in the special issue.
