Transcript TOOL5100: CSCL

TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Anders Mørch
TOOL 5100, 16.02.06
A. Mørch, 16.02.2006
TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Outline
• Paradigms in educational research
– Computer-aided instruction (CAI)
– ITS
– Logo-as-Latin
• Evolution of theoretical positions on
collaborative learning
– From individual to social concerns
– Key factors that influence research design
• Comparing evolution and paradigm shifts
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Paradigms in educational
research
• Koschmann argues that CSCL is a new paradigm
in computer-supported teaching and learning
• He gives examples of three other paradigms that
are distinct from CSCL
• Paradigm, according to Kuhn (1972):
– Goes beyond evolution and gradual change (change
by punctuated equilibrium, gestalt-switch)
– Provides a new set of topics, tools, methodologies,
and premises to be researched
– Members of different paradigms cannot easily
communicate using their own scientific terminology
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Paradigms of instructional
technology
• 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)
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Computer-Aided Instruction
• 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 “acquisitiontransmission” metaphor of teaching and learning
• Today often associated with instructional design,
such as reusable learning objects and domainspecific repositories that domain experts (e.g.
teachers) can search to find teaching material
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Intelligent Tutoring Systems
• 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)
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Logo-as-Latin
• 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,
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1990)
TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Computer Supported
Collaborative Learning
• 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
– Sociocultural theories
– Situated and shared cognition
• We return to these in the next article
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Summary of 4 paradigms
•
See Table 1.1(p. 16) in Koschmann’s article
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Evolution of research in CSCL
• This paper, by Dillenbourg and colleagues,
addresses how research have changed within the
field of CSCL
• The focus is on psychological concerns of
collaborative learning and less on the role of
computer as mediating artifact
• The computer is seen in the role of providing
support of interaction analysis and modeling
collaborative learning (we come back to these
themes later in the course)
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Key characteristics of CSCL
• A trend toward support of process rather than
primarily on outcome, as in other paradigms
• Theoretically motivated, using empirical research
(this is to some extent a result of the authors
background)
• Unit of analysis is a complex issue that is
positioned on an axis between the individual and
the social (‘group’ and ‘activity’ are two key ones)
• A trend has been to move from the inner (psychol)
concerns to the outer (social) concerns
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Key characteristics cont’d
• Research in CSCL need to be aware of the
following distinctions
– Learning vs. problem solving
– Collaboration vs. cooperation
• In many ways CSCL has moved:
– From problem solving to learning (e.g. learning by
joint problem solving)
– From cooperation to collaboration
• Priority on process rather than outcome
• Joint interaction on common goal rather than strict division of
labor into subtasks
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Theoretical positions
• Along an axis from individual to social the
following theoretical positions (or perspectives) has
been identified as prerequisite for CSCL:
– Social constructivism
– Sociocultural approaches
– Situated and shared cognition
• The two articles diverge slightly with regards to
how they define the three perspectives
• Dillenbourg puts more emphasis on computational
models and uses examples from DAI (Distributed
AI) to propose models of collaborative learning
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Social constructivism
• Also referred to as socio-cognitive approach
• Originated with Piaget and later extended to include
social influences on individual development
• Unit of analysis is individual development in the
context of social interaction, implying two planes:
social and individual
• An issue becomes how to intertwine the two planes
• Experimentation is often conducted by pre and post
tests, e,g, to assess the usefulness of collaborative
learning compared to individual learning
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Sociocultural theories
• Unit of analysis is the ‘activity’: individuals acting
to achieve goals within a community using artefacts
and rules to mediate and guide the activity
• Vygotsky’s notion that inter-psychological (social)
processes precedes intra-psychological processes
(inner speech and thought) is important in this
perspective (referred to as ‘internalization’)
• The role of mediating artifacts in these processes,
from everyday tools and computers to language, are
also important
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Situated and shared cognition
• This is the most socially oriented of the three
perspectives
• The environment is seen as an integrated part of the
individual (cognitive) activity
• A focus is to identify the influence of the social plane
– Situated cognition and situated learning (e.g Suchman,
Lave & Wenger)
– Distributed cognition (e.g. Hutchins)
• This perspective in CSCL has been stimulated by
apprenticeship learning (e.g. Lave, Rogoff)
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Three factors that influence
research design and experiments
• Effects
• Conditions
– Group heterogeneity
– Individual prerequisites
– Task features
• Interactions
– Explanation
– Control
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Role of the computer
• Tool
– Interaction analysis
– Analysing and modeling collaborative
learning practices
• Negotiation
• Argumentation
• Mediating artifact
– This is not addressed in this article
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TOOL5100: CSCL
Intro to CSCL, part 1
Paradigm shift vs. Evolution
• In philosophy of science there has been a debate
regarding the mechanisms behind the growth of
scientific knowledge
– Does it proceed according to paradigm shifts or by
incremental (evolutionary) development over time?
– The answer can be either/or or both, depending on
– How we distinguish between different components of a
research field and analyze how they change over time
• Technologies, tools and language (artifacts) may have to be
treated differently from premises, practices, and perspectives
• For those interested: Kuhn and Popper and others have debated
the development of Copernicus’ model of the solar system
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