Tuesday Symposia


Session 1: 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM


Making a Difference: Analytics for Quality Knowledge-Building Conversations

Frank De Jong – Aeres University of Applied Siences Wageningen
Joan Van den Ende – Aeres University of Applied Siences Wageningen
Hennie Van Heijst – Aeres University of Applied Siences Wageningen
Yoshiaki Matsuzawa – Aoyama Gakuin University
Paul Kirschner – Open University
Jianwei Zhang – University at Albany
Mei-Hwa Chen – University at Alban
Feng Chen – University at Albany
Carolyn Rosé – Carnegie Mellon University
Erick Velazquez Godinez – LiNCS Lab, Ecole de Technologie Superieure
Sylvie Ratté – LiNCS Lab, Ecole de Technologie Superieure
Bodong Chen – University of Minnesota, USA
Carol Chan – University of Hong Kong
Jan Van Aalst – University of Hong Kong
Christine Yang – University of Hong Kong
Jun Oshima – Shizuoka University
Cindy Hmelo-Silver – Indiana University
Alyssa Wise – New York University


Session 2: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM


Scripted and Unscripted Aspects of Creative Work with Knowledge

Carl Bereiter – Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology, University of Toronto
Ulrike Cress – Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (Knowledge Media Research Center), Tuebingen
Frank Fischer – Munich Center of the Learning Sciences & Department of Psychology, Ludwig Maximilians University
Kai Hakkarainen – Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki
Marlene Scardamalia – Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology, University of Toronto
Freydis Vogel – TUM School of Education, Technical University of Munich

Advances in scripting theory and advances in support for student-driven knowledge construction call for a reconsideration of long-standing issues of guidance, control, and agency. This symposium undertakes a fresh analysis based on the relations between two widely adopted approaches that may be poles apart but arguably viewed as variations within a common applied epistemological framework. The two approaches are scripted collaboration and Knowledge Building. Rather than focusing on similarities and differences, the symposium will address deeper problems such as reconciling external supports of all kinds with the self-organizing character of knowledge construction and integrating such supports into classrooms viewed as knowledge-creating communities. The centerpiece of the symposium is a panel discussion that includes experts who provide different theoretical viewpoints. In its synthesis the symposium will capture and make sense of what is strongest in the two approaches and provide a broad conceptual basis for next-generation initiatives.


Session 3: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM


CSCL and Eye-tracking: Experiences, Opportunities and Challenges

Kshitij Sharma – EPFL
Patrick Jermann – EPFL
Pierre Dillenbourg – EPFL
Martina Rau – University of Wisconsin-Madison
Zach Pardos – University of California-Berkeley
Bertrand Schneider – Harvard Graduate School of Education
Sarah D’Angelo – Northwestern University
Darren Gergle – Northwestern University
Luis Prieto – Tallinn University

The idea of using gaze as a medium to look into the collaborative processes had been around in CSCL for past few years. However, it had not been widely used in the community. Most of the works done in the direction of understanding collaborative cognition are majorly based on the qualitative methods. Research has shown that the collaborative gaze data can be used as an alternate source of information to assess collaboration. Once, we understand the how the gaze data reflects the collaboration quality and success, we could design gaze-aware systems to support remote/collocated collaboration. In this symposium, we bring together five papers that use eye-tracking data as a proxy for communication and cognition during remote/collocated collaborative learning and propose design of gaze-aware systems.


Session 4: 5:30 PM to 7:00PM


Toward a Multi-Level Knowledge Building Network

Marlene Scardamalia — University of Toronto
Carl Bereiter — University of Toronto
Thérèse Laferrière — Université Laval

Emergent phenomena are inherently unpredictable. Knowledge building requires collaborative bootstrapping, with participants at all levels of the education system part of a collective effort to go beyond information exchange to innovation-producing networks that demonstrate that education can operate as a knowledge creating enterprise. Organizational theories and research are increasingly focused on multilevel perspectives for creating actionable knowledge; the challenge is to take advantage of emergence to self-organize around solutions and new means. By “innovation networks”, we mean networks that go beyond sharing and discussion to the actual creation of new knowledge and innovations. Self-organization and emergence surround us, all the time and at multiple levels, whether we are aware or not. However, self organization around idea improvement is rare and requires engaging innovative capacity at all levels, a research-intensive enterprise surrounding innovations, and an open source engineering team committed to enabling new forms of interaction, media, and analytic tools. “Multi-level” envisions inclusion of students, teachers, administrators, researchers, engineers, and policy makers in a collaborative enterprise. This session takes the form of a design think tank to advance conceptual frameworks and means for new and more powerful environments to support a multi-level knowledge building innovation network.


Wednesday Symposia


Session 1: 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM


Collaborative Problem Solving: Innovating Standardized Assessment

Lei Liu – Educational Testing Service
Jiangang Hao – Educational Testing Service
Jessica Andrews – Educational Testing Service
Mengxiao Zhu – Educational Testing Service
Robert Mislevy – Educational Testing Service
Patrick Kyllonen – Educational Testing Service
Alina von Davier – ACT
Deirdre Kerr – Sony Interactive Entertainment
Thales Ricarte – Universidade de São Paulo
Art Graesser – University of Memphis

In this symposium, we present the overall design, data, and scientific findings from the ETS Collaborative Science Assessment Prototype (ECSAP). We are opening our data to the CSCL community and introducing the procedures to request access to the data. ECSAP was developed to explore the assessment of collaborative problem solving (CPS) competency through a large-scale and standardized approach. The goal of this symposium is to examine research questions that are of interest to the CSCL community, such as how CPS skills and collaborative patterns interact with performance outcomes, and how prior content knowledge and personality of team members affect the collaboration process and outcomes. In our study, we collected both individual and collaborative responses (~1500 responses) to the ECSAP instruments. We present our study findings that used new methodologies in psychometrics and followed the best practices of psychometrics and statistics.


Session 2: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM


Technology and Applications for Collaborative Learning in Virtual Reality

Scott Greenwald – MIT Media Lab
Alexander Kulik – Bauhaus­ Universität Weimar
André Kunert – Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Stephan Beck – Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Bernd Fröhlich – Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Sue Cobb – University of Nottingham
Sarah Parsons – University of Southampton
Nigel Newbutt – University of the West of England
Christine Gouveia – McGraw-Hill Education
Claire Cook – McGraw-Hill Education
Anne Snyder – McGraw-Hill Education
Scott Payne – McGraw-Hill Education
Jennifer Holland – Google Inc.
Shawn Buessing – Google Inc.
Gabriel Fields – MIT Media Lab
Wiley Corning – MIT Media Lab
Victoria Lee – MIT Sloan School of Management
Lei Xia – MIT Sloan School of Management
Pattie Maes – MIT Media Lab

In this symposium we explore the immense potential for virtual reality to be applied in educational settings. We discuss recent technological developments against a backdrop of several decades of research. Six presentations, including four from academic authors and two from the commercial sector, will explore user requirements, new technologies, and practical issues in collaborative VR applications for learning.


Session 3: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM


Libraries as Emerging Spaces for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning in Schools and Communities

Victor Lee – Utah State University
Carrie Tzou – University of Washington, Bothell
Megan Bang – University of Washington, Seattle
Philip Bell – University of Washington, Seattle
Shelley Stromholt – University of Washington, Seattle
Nancy Price – University of Washington, Seattle
Meixi Ng – University of Washington, Seattle
Yasmin Kafai – University of Pennsylvania
Orkan Telhan – University of Pennsylvania
Richard Davis – Stanford University
K-Fai Steele – National Writing Project
Barrie Adleberg – Connected Sparks
Jennifer Kahn – Vanderbilt University
Rogers Hall – Vanderbilt University
Abigail Phillips – Utah State University
Jennifer Hansen – Utah State University
Mimi Recker – Utah State University
Brigid Barron – Stanford University

Libraries are undergoing a reconceptualization in their roles as lifelong learning centers for local communities, with STEM content areas and Maker activities receiving special emphasis. This represents a critical and unique research, design, and partnership opportunity for learning scientists and computer-supported collaborative learning scholars. This symposium brings together project teams from four different locales in the United States that have partnered with libraries to bring about new resources and activities that emphasize computer-supported collaborative learning. These projects represent major urban libraries, special collections, community branch libraries, and school libraries. By bringing together these different teams, this symposium aims to promote dialogue about the affordances and constraints associated with CSCL-oriented activity design in libraries, identify commonalities and differences across region and library types, and ground-truth what specific challenges and solutions have been identified in researcher-library partnerships.