Journal Contents of Volume 15, Issue 3, September 2020

Building community together: towards equitable CSCL practices and processes

Authors: Carolyn P. Rosé, Sanna Järvelä

Introduction: As a research community, the International Society of the Learning Sciences has always worked hard to maintain representation across multiple dimensions of diversity, including, but certainly not limited to regions and disciplines. The events of this past Summer challenge both our personal senses of safety and wellbeing as well as our bonds of community and joint engagement, which rest upon that foundation, a foundation meant to enable a productive synergy in the light of diversity. In this time that shakes us to our very core, we reflect on our research with renewed vigor, asking ourselves the hard questions of what we stand for as a community. In the research of the learning sciences, we strive to further STEM education (Matuk and Linn 2018; Solli et al. 2018), but now our faith even in science is challenged as we look to an uncertain future with respect to a vaccine for COVID 19. In our CSCL research, we advocate for support that increases transactivity in the collaborative interactions supported in our learning environments (van Heijst et al. 2019), but in both our personal and professional lives we struggle to engage with communities whose political beliefs are far different from our own. We conduct research in the hopes to foster a sense of agency and self-efficacy in the students our research touches (Lee and Song 2016; Tchounikine 2019), and yet the natural disasters around us challenge the extent to which we can truly believe we are in control. In the midst of these shifting sands, we offer to this community the September edition of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative learning, comprising four full articles and one squib, all of which speak to these themes, with a consistent deep inspection of processes of collaboration. In the words of Gutiérrez and Jurow (2016), we look hopefully into these processes “that empower learners to become authors of their own futures”. Though we as a journal community greatly value both large scale quantitative research (Holtz et al. 2018) and deep, reflective qualitative research, in this time of quiet reflection, we offer a collection fully within the qualitative tradition, though we look forward to strong empirical articles in future editions of the journal. [full article]

Citation: Rosé, C. P. & Järvelä, S. (2020) Building community together: towards equitable CSCL practices and processes. ijcscl 15 (3), pp. 249-255

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-020-09329-z

About this article at link.springer.com including a link to the official electronic version.

Data wrangling practices and collaborative interactions with aggregated data

Authors: Shiyan Jiang, Jennifer Kahn

Abstract: Data visualization technologies are powerful tools for telling evidence-based narratives about oneself and the world. This paper contributes to the literature on data science education by examining the sociotechnical practices of data wrangling—strategies for selecting and managing large, aggregated datasets to produce a model and story. We examined the learning opportunities related to data wrangling practices by investigating youth’s talk-in-interaction while assembling models and stories about family migration using interactive data visualization tools and large socioeconomic datasets. We first identified ten sociotechnical practices that characterize youth’s interaction with tools and collaboration in data wrangling. We then suggest four categories of activities to describe patterns of learning related to the practices, including addressing missing data, understanding data aggregation, exploring social or historical events that constitute the formation of data patterns, and varying data visual encoding for storytelling. These practices and activities are important to understand for supporting future data science education opportunities that facilitate learning and discussion about scientific and socioeconomic issues. This study also sheds light on how the family migration modeling context positions the youth as having agency and authority over the data and contributes to the design of CSCL environments that tackle the challenges of data wrangling.

Keywords: Data wrangling, Modeling, Storytelling, Family migration, Data visualization, Sociotechnical practices

Citation: Jiang, S. & Kahn, J. (2020) Data wrangling practices and collaborative interactions with aggregated data. ijcscl 15 (3), pp. 257-281

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-020-09327-1

About this article at link.springer.com including a link to the official electronic version.

Dialogic intervisualizing in multimodal inquiry

Authors: Susan M. Bridges, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Lap Ki Chan, Judith L. Green, Asmalina Saleh

Abstract: Problem-based learning (PBL) designs are addressing the demands and potentials of an information-saturated era where accessing inquiry resources and new information is reconfiguring tutor-facilitated dialogues. Unclear is how incorporation of CSCL tools and the rich digital multimodal resources they collaboratively access and generate are re-shaping the traditional problem-based cycle of inquiry and intersubjective sense-making. This study in higher education adopts Interactional Ethnography (IE) as a logic-of-inquiry to examine how a group of medical undergraduate students and their facilitator (n = 12) collaborated to access, review, appropriate and devise multimodal digital and visual texts within and across one problem cycle (three face-to-face tutorials and self-directed learning). Drawing on concepts of ‘multimodality’ and ‘intervisuality’ from literacy theory, we extend theoretical understandings of how multimodal texts become actors within a developing PBL event, not just objects of study or cultural tools. Through this multi-focal approach, we make visible how what occurs at one point in time with these texts in the developing dialogic space is consequential for what students can and do undertake in subsequent engagements with such texts in and across one bounded cycle of learning activities. Arising from this analysis, we propose the concept of dialogic intervisualizing to characterize the dynamic interplay between and among information problem-solving processes, textual negotiations and purposeful, facilitated dialogue for deep knowledge co-construction within and across collaborative, computer supported learning activity in an inquiry cycle.

Keywords: Learning, collaboration, computer support, inquiry, information problem-solving

Citation: Bridges, S. M., Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Chan, L. K., Green, J. L. & Saleh, A. (2020) Dialogic intervisualizing in multimodal inquiry. ijcscl 15 (3), pp. 283-318

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-020-09328-0

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Bringing maker practices to school: tracing discursive and materially mediated aspects of student teams’ collaborative making processes

Authors: Sini Riikonen, Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Kai Hakkarainen

Abstract: The present investigation aimed to analyze the collaborative making processes and ways of organizing collaboration processes of five student teams. As a part of regular school work, the seventh-grade students were engaged in the use of traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making artifacts. To analyze complex, longitudinal collaborative making processes, we developed the visual Making-Process-Rug video analysis method, which enabled tracing intertwined with social-discursive and materially mediated making processes and zoomed in on the teams’ efforts to organize their collaborative processes. The results indicated that four of the five teams were able to take on multifaceted epistemic and fabrication-related challenges and come up with novel co-inventions. The successful teams’ social-discursive and embodied making actions supported each another. These teams dealt with the complexity of invention challenges by spending a great deal of their time in model making and digital experimentation, and their making process progressed iteratively. The development of adequate co-invention and well-organized collaboration processes appeared to be anchored in the team’s shared epistemic object.

Keywords: Co-invention, Collaborative making, Epistemic object, Knowledge-creating learning, Sociomateriality, Teamwork

Citation: Riikonen, S., P. Seitamaa-Hakkarainen & Hakkarainen, K. (2020) Bringing maker practices to school: tracing discursive and materially mediated aspects of student teams’ collaborative making processes. ijcscl 15 (3), pp. 319-349

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-020-09330-6

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Encouraging collaboration and building Community in Online Asynchronous Professional Development: designing for social capital

Authors: Susan A. Yoon, Katherine Miller, Thomas Richman, Daniel Wendel, Ilana Schoenfeld, Emma Anderson, Jooeun Shim

Abstract: This research investigates a design and development approach to improving science teachers’ access to effective professional development (PD) in a fully online, asynchronous environment. Working with a small number of teachers, this study explores how a design combining social capital mechanisms with essential teacher learning and PD characteristics supported teachers’ abilities to participate in the online course and collaboratively build knowledge. Teachers’ perceptions of their experiences both in surveys and interviews demonstrated high satisfaction with the quality and usability of the PD, including positive beliefs related to the social capital elements of tie quality, depth of interaction, and access to expertise. Further transactivity analyses of their interactions in course discussions showed higher levels of collaborative discourse resulting from prompts that specifically targeted the exchange of information over those that asked teachers to reflect about their content understanding or their classroom practice. Implications for this design for asynchronous online PD approaches to reach more teachers are discussed.

Keywords: Social Capital, Online Asynchronous Learning, Teacher Professional Development, Transactivity

Citation: Yoon, S. A., Miller, K., Richman, T., Wendel, D., Schoenfeld, I., Anderson, E. & Shim, J. (2020) Encouraging collaboration and building Community in Online Asynchronous Professional Development: designing for social capital. ijcscl 15 (3), pp. 351-371

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-020-09326-2

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Finding a place for equity in CSCL: ambitious learning practices as a lever for sustained educational change

Authors: Suraj Uttamchandani, Ayesha Bhimdiwala, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver

Abstract: This research investigates a design and development approach to improving science teachers’ access to effective professional development (PD) in a fully online, asynchronous environment. Working with a small number of teachers, this study explores how a design combining social capital mechanisms with essential teacher learning and PD characteristics supported teachers’ abilities to participate in the online course and collaboratively build knowledge. Teachers’ perceptions of their experiences both in surveys and interviews demonstrated high satisfaction with the quality and usability of the PD, including positive beliefs related to the social capital elements of tie quality, depth of interaction, and access to expertise. Further transactivity analyses of their interactions in course discussions showed higher levels of collaborative discourse resulting from prompts that specifically targeted the exchange of information over those that asked teachers to reflect about their content understanding or their classroom practice. Implications for this design for asynchronous online PD approaches to reach more teachers are discussed.

Citation: Uttamchandani, S., Bhimdiwala, A. & Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2020) Finding a place for equity in CSCL: ambitious learning practices as a lever for sustained educational change. ijcscl 15 (3), pp. 373-382

DOI: 10.1007/s11412-020-09325-3

About this article at link.springer.com including a link to the official electronic version.