The introduction of computational modeling into science curricula has been shown to benefit students’ learning, however the synergistic learning processes that contribute to these benefits are not fully understood. We study students’ synergistic learning of physics and computational thinking (CT) through their actions and collaborative discourse as they develop computational models in a visual block-structured environment. We adopt a case study approach to analyze students synergistic learning processes related to stopping conditions, initialization, and debugging episodes. Our findings show a pattern of evolving sophistication in synergistic reasoning for model-building activities.
This paper explored how to scaffold teachers’ analysis of dialogue in order to improve their formative assessments. We implemented a half-day teacher workshop wherein the teachers were asked to collaboratively analyze a transcribed dialogue using both a manual approach and dialogue analysis tool. An analysis of the teachers’ writings and dialogues in the workshop revealed that the teachers were able to identify the students’ lack of understanding and consider its reasons usable in formative assessments.
This symposium aims to explore current research working toward conceptualizing and measuring productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) contextualized in diverse learning and project contexts. Disciplinary engagement is critical for fostering students’ deep, integrated understanding of STEM content and disciplinary practices. However, there are significant challenges to reaching this engagement quality, with CSCL environments providing opportunities and supports for engagement, but also posing challenges. This symposium aims to account for recent developments, as presenters showcase rich range in exploring application of PDE in diverse domains, grade bands, and learning contexts. The presentations also showcase a range of methods to analyze PDE as collective, situated, cross-contextual, dynamic, and generative. This symposium aims to explore current research working toward conceptualizing and measuring productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) contextualized in diverse learning and project contexts. This topic is particularly relevant for computer-supported collaborative learning with its focus on coordinating efforts to build shared knowledge with the use of technology support (Roschelle, 2013). Consistent with the theme of the conference, we consider the complex ecosystems of collaborative learning that are embedded within disciplinary ideas and practices. Disciplinary engagement is critical for fostering students’ deep, integrated understanding of STEM content and disciplinary practices. Since the early days of reform-based curricula involving inquiry and problem solving, we have been aware that “sustaining the doing, supporting the learning” is necessary to reap the benefits of these challenging learning environments (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). That is, students need to engage in ways that translate their motivations into generative learning with benefits for a greater likelihood of transfer to subsequent educational and professional contexts. There are significant challenges to reaching this deep-level engagement, such as the necessity to coordinate joint activity during cognitively demanding tasks. CSCL environments provide opportunities and supports for engaging in these kinds of tasks, but can also pose challenges (Jeong & Hmelo-Silver, 2016). We draw from Engle & Conant’s (2002) definition of PDE as making collective intellectual progress related to core ideas and disciplinary practices during authentic tasks. PDE exemplifies developments in the learning sciences, including a situative view of engagement, as (1) negotiated and constructed in particular activity systems and (2) comprised of instructional opportunities that support and constrain engagement (Greeno, 2006). CSCL 2019 Proceedings 775 © ISLS This view of engagement significantly extends research which has been grounded in an individual difference paradigm and has been conceptualized as general sense making (e.g., Zimmerman, 1990). Thus, these developments advance engagement as embedded within domain-specific and disciplinary contexts, and central to and inseparable from learning (Gresalfi, et al., 2009). Here, the quality of collective persistence in the face of challenge, positive affect and interest in the ideas and doing of activity, and interpersonal interactions while making meaningful connections is central to what students come to understand; highlighting the various interdependencies of learning processes, a central aim of CSCL research. Now 15 years after the introduction of PDE, this symposium aims to present the frontiers of the research and account for developments, as the presentations examine PDE in a range of CSCL environments. We strive to build on a literature which has been limited to a focus on definition within single and illustrative cases to broaden the analytic and empirical landscape. Toward that end, we bring together four research groups showcasing rich range in exploring application of PDE in diverse domains (science, mathematics, engineering, educational psychology), grade bands (middle school through University) and learning contexts (after school programs, inquiry and problem solving curricula, online CSCL, as well as across resources and contexts). The presentations also showcase a range of methods to analyze PDE as collective, situated, cross-contextual, dynamic, and generative. Each presenter will introduce their (1) guiding framework for theorizing collective PDE, as contextualized in particular tasks, domains, instructional settings and disciplinary practices; (2) observable indicators of disciplinary engagement in the collective; and (3) analytic foci, making explicit the affordances of rich analysis for understanding collective engagement. As called for in the CSCL 2019 theme, these varied efforts to foster and study PDE have been carried out in contexts that are intended to support embodied, enactive, extended, and/or embedded CSCL. First, Gresalfi and her colleagues investigate the role of design features, alongside teachers and peers as relational resources, for jointly fostering persistence in the face of challenge for children in a computer science camp e on , am a an a onen consider the interrelationships of engagement dimensions for within and between group interactions during software engineering courses. Using social network analysis alongside qualitative content analysis, they track the change in density and the nature of collaborative engagement, among dimensions, over time. Next, Rogat and colleagues showcase their theoretical framework instantiated in a rubric using quality ratings to examine five dimensions of PDE during collaborative group exchanges, to contrast two case groups during a common collaborative task across two time segments. Subsequently, Hickey and colleagues extend the PDE design framework to be inclusive of expansive framing, by which learners engage with conceptual and disciplinary material in terms of their own personal and cultural orientations within three different undergraduate and graduate online CSCL contexts. Finally, our discussant addresses how these papers have collectively advanced what we understand about PDE within CSCL contexts. Same place, new rules: The joint accomplishment of engagement Melissa Gresalfi, Amanda Bell, Corey Brady, and Lauren Vogelstein We face a documented shortage of computer scientists. By 2024, 1.1 million jobs are predicted in computing fields (Lockard & Wolf, 2012), but in 2015, fewer than 17,000 people graduated with computer science-related degrees; of those, fewer than 3,000 were women. Just 7% of workers in computing in 2014 identified as Black and 7% as Hispanic (Beckhusen, 2016). Clearly, the challenge we face is not only to encourage more people to engage in computing, but also to ensure that the diversity of our community is reflected in the field. To address this challenge, many suggest introducing students to Computer Science (CS) well before college. However, bringing computational thinking (CT) into K-12 contexts comes with its own potential challenges. Without careful attention to pedagogy and design, we might ultimately teach computational thinking in schools in ways that exacerbate current trends, contributing to the same K-12 participation gaps in interest and identity that we see in other STEM related fields. Thus, it is imperative that we look to the lessons learned about designing for equitable participation in these other fields as we seek to understand how to connect CS to K-12 contexts. Research on students’ mathematics learning has demonstrated how different designs support different forms of knowing. These same studies have established that the patterns we associate with who is good at math and who wants to persist at mathematics is as much a function of the way mathematics is taught than of mathematics itself. This is not to say that the field of mathematics has solved the problem of participation—quite to the contrary (Martin, Gholson, & Leonard, 2010). However, when we look at classrooms that reorganize the teaching of mathematics so that engaging the discipline is more than remembering facts and answering questions quickly, we find that very different patterns in interest and engagement emerge (Boaler & Greeno, 2000; Boaler & Staples, 2008). In contrast, a fast-paced, competitive environment turns off many students from the discipline. It would be easy for this very same scenario happening with respect to Computational Thinking as so much of CT content might reasonably be organized into a set of facts and rules to be taught and practiced. CSCL 2019 Proceedings 776 © ISLS However, CT also involves practices of design (Kafai, 2016) that requires the understanding and principled adaptation of underlying facts and rules. Teaching students a set of rules that can then be applied is the version of teaching that is popular (and largely unsuccessful) in math classrooms; teaching students a set of design practices that create a need for CT concepts is a version of teaching that is being explored, with success, in math classrooms. This study seeks to better understand how to support rich engagement with CT through the design of activities that leverage programming as a means of enacting expressive visual displays and effects. We conceptualize engagement as a collective act between person and context, seen as an interplay between the affordances of a learning environment and whether and how students act on those affordances. In previous work (Gresalfi, 2015; Gresalfi & Barab, 2011) we distinguished between different forms of agency that primarily focus on following rules and procedures, from more productive disciplinary engagement (Engle & Conant, 2002), which we see as involving consequential engagement (considering the implications of disciplinary decisions) and critical engagement (using those consequences to make decisions about how to best solve problems). In prior work, we have focused on the role of tasks in suppo
This conceptual paper examines the educative potential of social media as a platform for everyday on-demand computer-supported collaborative informal learning. We propose three dimensions: reliability, learnability and critical-construction, as a framework for investigating collaborative learning within naturally occurring social media. We use YouTube as a focal case. Our review of literature on YouTube as a space for informal peer learning suggests that postvideo deliberative comments hold much promise as precursors for co-construction of knowledge. However, questions remain concerning the veracity of user-contributed videos, and the adequacy of this medium for different learning goals. Nonetheless, investigating the educative value of non-formal person-to-person knowledge sharing on social media can be an important direction for CSCL research in its aim to support learners in formal environments for future life-long learning and civic engagement.
: This short paper describes BioScann, a high school STEM inquiry curriculum that uses a CSCL environment to support an interrupted case studies (ICS) method. This technology-enhanced curriculum supports autonomous, sustained student engagement, scientific argumentation, conceptual understanding, and the development of student self-efficacy and career awareness. The BioScann technology platform scaffolds student activities, collects student artifacts, and helps the teacher advance the curriculum through various stages. We discuss how our designs were improved across multiple pilot studies, including two major versions of the curriculum and technology. Each new pilot allowed us to improve the materials and technology environment, as well as student engagement, career awareness, and collaborative data-based decision-making.
The current study examines how children develop different interactional strategies around digital technology as they get enculturated within a community of design learners. Using a comparative case study of a single case we discuss how a student progresses from individual to collective interactional strategies, over a period of time, as she collaborates around digital technology in a small design group. We then discuss the social affordances of technology and its importance in developing technology integration models. Technology integration in collaborative learning The introduction of screen-based technologies has led to improvements in developing both academic and 21st century skills and hence many schools have quickly adopted one computer per student initiatives in a classroom (Freeman et al., 2017; Swallow, 2017). However, the mere addition of technology in learning environments is not a sufficient condition to ensure improvements in learning outcomes, since technology presents trade-offs that interact with individual and group processes (Jeong & Hmelo-Silver, 2016; Kirkwood & Price, 2014; Lim & Chai, 2008). Our previous work suggests that digital technology affords different kinds of interactions in collaborative learning environment that are especially problematic in developing shared understanding among young children (Toprani, Yan, & Borge, 2016). These findings led us to further unpack the results on a time scale to understand if these processes are impacted by continued participation within a community of learners. Towards this goal, the current study aims at identifying the interactional strategies that students use around digital technology as a part of learning design, over a period of time, and subsequently analyzing their development within the larger culture of design practices. Technology has been efficiently used to widen the scope of learning by providing more competent tools to learn with, however, it’s potential to bring about a shift from traditional instructional approach to a studentcentered instructional approach fostering higher-order thinking processes are preliminarily developed (Kirkwood & Price, 2014). There is a need for developing technology integration models that approach the process from a nested, systemic perspective where the role of technology is studied in relation to factors like curriculum, teaching pedagogies, learner’s needs, and the learning goals (Veletsianos, 2016). We conceptualize collaboration as a nested process between individuals, small groups, and the larger classroom community. During this process participants are engaging in higher-order thinking: developing a joint understanding about the idea, collectively critiquing the idea, discussing alternative perspectives, evaluating its feasibility, and negotiating solutions so as to create new knowledge (Stahl, 2006). Studies that look at collaboration from a nested, knowledgebuilding perspective have found technology to have a more ambiguous and distributed impact on learning because of the interplay of a number of factors (Jeong & Hmelo-Silver, 2016; Toprani et al., 2016). Hence, in the current study we intend to explore How student’s strategies around digital technology change as they become a part of the community of design learners? To take a systemic perspective, we explore these ideas in relation to one student’s process of getting enculturated within the afterschool club over a period of two years. We view enculturation as a process that supports not only the acquisition of knowledge but also development of judgements around its application (Tishman, Jay, Perkins, 1993). We track the development of a student, “Catherine”, who was a part of the afterschool club for more than two years (four semesters). We identify the collaborative strategies she developed around digital technology in relation to her continued participation at the club. The study is designed from the student’s vantage point to understand technology’s affordances within a sociotechnical system i.e. what the technology offers and how the students develop social processes to make use of it. We observe Catherine’s interactional strategies over a period of two years, within the larger framework of the afterschool club’s cultural practices to understand how her interactional strategies change. Context and data selection The current study is situated within an afterschool club, developed to promote design thinking among 8-12 years old students, in North East United States. The club is conducted weekly and each session is 75 minutes long where students work on design projects in teams of three or four. The goal of the club is to help students go through different design stages of questioning, planning, creating, and finally evaluating their design prototype against the initial client requirements. As a part of this project, Catherine, joined the club as a 4 grader and returned to the CSCL 2019 Proceedings 589 © ISLS club every semester starting Fall 2015, until Spring 2017 (i.e. four semesters). Her case provides a unique perspective to understand how student’s collaborative strategies develop as they get enculturated through the club activities and experiences. Catherine, in her first semester was grouped with three other students of her age: Kathy, Eric, and Aron. They worked on creating a garden for a fictional client named Fred. In Spring 2017, Catherine was grouped with the same members Eric and Aron, and the fourth member was changed to Marcos. In this semester they were again creating a butterfly garden for Fred with a different set of requirements. In both the semesters students would create a Lego plan of their design and then recreate the same design in Minecraft, incorporating minor revisions. We selected Catherine, because she has been in the club the longest without missing any semesters. We compared Catherine’s collaborative strategies around digital technology across three semesters i.e. Fall 2015 (FA15) and Spring 2016 (SP16), when she was a novice to the design club’s culture, and Spring 2017 (SP17), when she was enculturated in the design club based on her participation for four semesters. By systematically reviewing video data and curriculum plan we selected one comparable lesson for each of the three time points. Across the three semesters, we selected the first lesson when they started designing with digital technologies.
In computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), verbal and non-verbal behaviors among group members are often examined to help investigate how people in groups interact and learn. Analytic methods used on language data that involve a certain degree of quantification are not rare. This study examines the quantification of qualitative data that involves some form of language use in articles included in the proceedings of international conferences on CSCL from 2005 to 2017. The goal of this systematic review is to identify gaps in methodological effort of quantifying human interactions and communication in terms of research contexts, levels of analysis, and time points of assessment. In synthesizing information on these three aspects, we hope to identify trends over the years and encourage more effort in less researched areas.
Coand socially shared regulation of learning is a challenge for groups in diverse environments – offline and online (Järvelä et al., 2014). Specifically, prompting others to do their share of the work, might be challenging for interpersonal relationships. Thus, addressing the social psychological dynamics in online learning environments, an online experiment was conducted (N = 352). In a 2x(2x)2 between-subjects design the nature of the sender (group member/system), the sender ́s past proficiency (high/low) and publicness (private/public message) were varied to explore whether automated mediation can reduce detrimental effects and enhance impartial message perception, sender impression and causal attribution. Contrasts by sender and proficiency demonstrate improved message perception, sender impression and internal causal attribution when prompts were sent by the system instead of average or low proficient fellow students. Among all groups, public nudges indicate more negative, but also more persuasive perception, however system public and private nudges did not differ.
This poster explores how different types of virtual reality technology (VR) allow for various degrees of collaborative enactment within virtual environments. This two-staged study analyzed the engagement and reflections of 27 students with three forms of VR hardware. Findings from direct observations and students’ perceptions suggest that the capabilities of high-end immersive virtual reality (IVR) can allow for more meaningful and natural forms of embodied interactions, locomotion, and verbal communication.
Net.Create is an open source network analysis software tool that affords simultaneous data-entry and network analysis to help students collaboratively co-construct knowledge about a large corpus of data. In this interactive demo, we demonstrate how the tool uniquely supports collaboration at both the small and large group level in a big lecture format to facilitate discovery, discussion, and reading comprehension in an interactive and engaging way.
: This poster discusses a promising collaboration platform to encourage students in co-constructing historical knowledge through a network visualization tool. The tool uniquely mediated collaboration at both the small and large group level in a big lecture format undergraduate history class. The findings demonstrated the tool mediated a specific sequence of collaborating processes at both levels and students’ ability to see the historical relationships.
: We present Toccata, a system supporting the management of rich multi-device pedagogical activities. Activities designed with Toccata are reusable, shareable and adaptable to the situation. Teachers face numerous challenges in designing and scripting pedagogical activities that incorporate rich media and applications, combine devices, group formations, and spaces. They also face challenges in orchestrating these activities in class, especially to guiding learners, following their progress, and maintaining a coherent learning experience. Our demonstration will showcase how Toccata answers these challenges by supporting individual or collaborative activities, in class or outdoors, under diverse technical conditions, e.g., offline on mobile devices, or fully connected with Desktop computers.
: This study adopted a principle-based knowledge-building pedagogy to engage groups in four design-thinking modes (i.e., observation, synthesis, ideation and make prototypes) in an online environment. Participants were 38 college students enrolled in an “Introduction to Living Technology” course at a Taiwanese university. They were randomly assigned to eight groups. Each group discussed their design ideas in a computer-supported collaborative knowledge-building environment - called Knowledge Forum (KF) - to collaboratively design a product. Data includes students’ design discussion in KF and analysis focused on online knowledge-building activities and groups’ design-thinking modes. In general, knowledge-building activities cultivated students in design-thinking modes during the design process as a group. Specifically, the extent to which groups sustained online engagement and the advancement of their group knowledge had a major impact on their design performance. Ways of applying knowledge-building principles to foster effective design processes are discussed.
In this study we present a digital microblogging tool called Talkwall with the aim to contribute to research focusing on how digital technology can facilitate student participation, dialogue, and learning in the classroom. By analyzing classroom interactions, we show how Talkwall supported joint meaning making in a whole-class setting.
Controversies based on opposing points of view and contradictory evidence can be fruitful to trigger individual elaboration processes. However, research showed that many wikis are not necessarily suited to make relevant content salient and thus users need further guidance. In an experimental laboratory study on wikis, we investigated two guidance types in conjunction with the Need for Cognitive Closure: (1) visual markers to highlight controversy status (implicit guidance) and (2) a collaboration script that directs users towards discussions (explicit guidance). We analysed the quality of N = 724 wiki contributions, namely final edits to an article and corresponding discussion replies. The results show that both guidance types do neither directly affect the user contributions to the wiki nor the learning outcome. In interaction with the individual Need for Cognitive Closure there was a meaningful effect on the quality of discussion contributions, matching previous research findings on the quantitative learning outcomes.
This paper illustrates the application of Projective Reflection (PR) as a theoretical framework in an ongoing NSF-CAREER study to trace learning as identity change among 20 high school students. A 9-week augmented virtual learning environment (AVLE) course, Virtual City Planning, was created and implemented in a science museum classroom. In-game and in-class student data and mentor observations were collected and analyzed using Quantitative Ethnography (QE) techniques to identify patterns of identity exploration enacted over time. This paper offers group findings to illustrate general trends of identity exploration during the AVLE, and one illustrative case study to provide an in-depth look at an integrated identity exploration trajectory. This work concludes with a discussion of the need for promoting identity exploration as an educational goal, and a means to support learners to adapt to the changing workforce of tomorrow. The affordances of AVLEs are discussed to advance research in this nascent area.
: We present BacToMars, a collaborative multiplayer educational video game that engages elementary school children in creative bio-design. We describe the design of the game, its learning goals, and findings from its preliminary evaluation when deployed in informal settings accompanied by a curricular intervention. Our findings shed light on how children play a collaborative multiplayer game while co-located, and on the potential of collaborative video games as a tool for teaching biological engineering to young children and for making a positive impact on their attitudes towards science.
