Analysis of Social Practices paper
From VMT
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Contents |
[edit] Instructions
- Provide a review of this paper.
- Comment on what you found relevant to the course in this paper.
[edit] Comments on Team Statements
- You picked up some of the conclusions about online interaction and got some of the flavor of the research. The readings for the next weeks will each go into detail on one of the excerpts from this week's paper. These papers do not represent the only or even the most popular form of research in HCI or CSCL. The textbook covers the range of research approaches for interaction design at a summary level. But this form of qualitative research tries to understand what is going on in interactions of interest as deeply as possible. The more deeply one analyzes details of interaction, the more one gets a sense of how online interaction takes place and how the technological environment should be designed to support and mediate interaction. The VMT research team has developed this approach as the best for guiding the evolutionary development of groupware like VMT. So in this course we are looking more deeply at such research.
Gerry 22:34, 8 May 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Team A Statement
- Brian, Olivia & Seth
- Seth E 20:47, 2 May 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Review of the Social Practice paper
This article differs from some of the articles we have reviewed the past few weeks because this paper provides concrete examples and findings from the VMT experience. The other papers described theories and generalizations, while this paper actually provides recent results obtained from examining the "data" and interaction of about one thousand student-hours of VMT sessions. The online community is used as a laboratory in order to study the social practices of group cognition in a real-life setting.
Interestingly enough, not only does the paper identify findings from analyzing student and group interaction and try to use the information into designing a more effective VMT environment, but the researchers did try and implement functionality to allow for more effective analysis of group interaction. For example, the VMT chat environment contains chat history functionality that allows for users and participants to scroll through the whiteboard history to easily identify areas of progress.
The paper uses the concept of conceptual design to develop VMT. This involves high-level abstractive cognition to understand what the requirements for the VMT system are. Stahl discovered that Informal collaborative networked learning involves the process of incorporating high-level learning with "deep understanding that comes from engaging in effective dialog and merging personal perspectives." In a relaxed social environment where collaboration can be undertaken in a peer-to-peer environment, great results can emerge. Stahl came up with a methodology that answered three fundamental concerns:
- 1. How to deepen the learning that takes place, given that most current examples of social networking and learning in online communities remain shallow.
- 2. How to introduce inquiry learning by student-centered informal online communities into social contexts dominated by formal schooling.
- 3. How to integrate (a) pedagogical scaffolding, (b) technological affordances and (c) motivational sociability into a coherent service that fosters a growing community.
VMT, through the various methodologies of use-case creation, discovered that "small groups construct their collaborative experience. The chat takes on a flow of interrelated ideas for the group, analogous to an individual’s stream of consciousness. The referential structure of this flow provides a basis for the group’s experience of intersubjectivity, common ground and a shared world." Stahl discovered that key ideas do not simply reflect mental representations of an individual, but arise through interactions in which people and groups respond to each other. Online, the ordering of chat messages can become confused without the sequential conventions of face-to-face communication. In the interest of social interaction, both participants and analysts must learn how to reconstitute and represent the response structure that drives group interaction.
Finally the paper discussed small group formation and several social practices observed. Social practices in earlier parts of the paper were graced with helping small groups solve challengeing problems better the individules by themselves.
[edit] Relevant Ideas from paper to the course
- Basic functions and purpose of VMT is relevant to the course because we are studying social interactive systems, and VMT was designed to study social interactive behavior.
- The concept of accountability is interesting and relevant. "This has to do with the notion of accountability. When people interact, they typically construct social order (such as conducting a fun chat or developing a math solution) and may produce social objects (like textual postings). These objects are accountable in the sense that they were tacitly designed to reveal their own significance."
- When this paper explained expository and exploratory discource it gave/provided a better understanding of the different types of social interaction that took place within our group. There were time when it seem that everyone in the group were caught up in solving a part of the asignments and other time it seems we made it up as we discovered the substance of a paper working together. It may have been caused by the differences types of assignments. So "project" verse a "analysis/reveiw"; reviews are more summary type of creations where as a projects requires much more critical think/imput/questions interaction by a group. And I think we work better as a group on things that togather especially with project or tougher assignments.
- Our group did comment of cooperation vs collaboration but this paper better defined these things in the social setting by bring several concepts together: "cooperative exposition and collaborative exploration". In essence, it showed that collaborative functions are a result of psychological/behavioral patterns, that when synced together through socialization, can be powerful tools for learning.
- This course gave us a framework for the conceptual visualization of information systems, in the arean of collaborative systems. VMT is a good demonstration of the synthesis of all that we have learned (in other classes), and how we can apply it to a real-world development scenario. Using the tools of conceptual analysis, we can embrak on a new process of information visualization.
[edit] Team B Statement
- Kate, Elizabeth, Fernando, Dave
- Dave 21:30, 7 May 2007 (EDT)
The Virtual Math Teams (VMT) is an endeavor to provide a collaborative workspace for teenage math students from around the globe. It grew out of an effort to fulfill the lack of collaboration medium in the online Math Forum website. VMT uses a non-linear community approach to learning. Analyzing the interactions and learning methodologies has been an important endeavor for the creators of VMT. The project has created ways to analyze and study the group cognition and social interactions within the VMT. This has helped researchers gain a better understanding of how individuals learn in a group collaborative environment. Several case studies of interactions within VMT are illustrative of how individuals interact in a social learning space.
[edit] VMT Description
Increasingly focused on students, the VMT features math problems that are solved with geometry or algebra. Research in math learning has highlighted the importance of math students discussing their analysis of math problems. VMT provides a place for students to meet and discuss various mathematical problems and issues. Starting out as a service providing a “problem of the week” for students VMT has grown since it’s inception in 2003. To add a collaborative capability VMT had originally used an off the shelf chat service. This has evolved into the highly capable refined VMT of today. The project team is attempting to address new challenges that have risen from using the VMT. Attempting to deepen the learning, bring about inquiry learning into environments dominated by classical formal learning, and integrating learning methodology scaffolding, technical affordances, and increasing the moral of the collective into the system. Each team in VMT consists of three to six teenage math students. These students meet and collaborate in chat rooms setup by VMT staff. Students can meet from anywhere at any time and no teacher is present.
[edit] Knowledge Process in VMT Chat
Chat within VMT has been seen to be a steady stream of interrelated ideas for the group. The chats are logged and played back later to analyze the collaborative effort. Students and teachers are also interviewed in an attempt to gain better feedback and understanding of the experience in using the VMT. In the chat rooms students solve math problems by building a group of reasoning that provide a final proof. An increasing amount of attention needs to be provided to analyzing the group experience within the collaborative environment rather than the individual. Groups working will together are capable of high-order cognitive accomplishments. This defines group cognition. The interaction among many produces initiatives that are not brought up by an individual but rather from the interaction between individuals. These interactions can be stifled in an online chat due to confusion that can take place due to differences in response time. The study of these types of interactions is the basis of the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL).
[edit] Analytical Practices in Documenting Social Methods and Group Knowledge Building
The VMT was built from the ground up to provide feedback to researchers on the ongoing group cognition. Persistent chat, drawings, and text messages are all available for CSCL studying. The textual chat has been the basis for communication in VMT. This has been supplemented with some social awareness features and a whiteboard workspace. Mathematical notation is supported in both the whiteboard and the chat. In order to help researchers understand the interactions between students a replay feature has been implemented. This allows a step by step account of the interaction taking place within the group. Sessions are held among researchers where they study this replay and discuss their analysis of what is taking place in the chat sessions. The group of researchers than are able to provide feedback to each other on their analysis and gain a similar group cognition that the math students are having. Studying the social structure and interactions, the researchers are able to make generalized understanding of VMT case studies. Though the student interactions are no reproducible in an experimental controlled environment one can generalize the social structures constructed in the interactions. The structures differ between cultures but basic patterns emerge in VMT when students are interacting on math issues. As the VMT project progresses the data gathered from analyzing the interactions between students is being used to revamp both the underlying software and the processes that drive it. The goal is gain an understanding of the interworking of group cognition in the VMT and to use it to improve the environment thereby increasing the effectiveness of the system.
[edit] Ethnomethodology
“Ethnomethodology is a phenomenological approach to sociology that tries to describe the methods that members of a culture use to accomplish what they do.” (Stahl, 2007). It is important not only to gather the information but to analyze the chat logs. Many methods of interaction can be identified when looking at these chat logs. A few key items of interest that the chat logs identify is how a consensus decision was made to solve a problem, how a person introduces themselves, how people socialize online, and how team members establish relationships. Interestingly, when students were given the math problem in advanced, the students described how they solved the problem (expository discourse) while those that were given the problem to work on just prior to meeting, collaborated to come to a solution (exploratory discourse). Another study was performed by giving the same problems to both individuals and then setting them up in groups. The evidence proved to show that groups outperformed the individuals. The group was able to solve more problems correctly in collaboration. There was also evidence that all members contributed. Their contribution may have not solved the issue but sparked conversation that led to the solution (exploratory discourse).
[edit] Referencing
Sometimes the online chat is not the best way to have a conversation. Posts to the chat can be out of order and do not follow a conversation that is typical of face-to-face conversations. VMT-Chat uses whiteboards in addition to chat to help students discuss and solve math problems. A good example presented shows a couple of students discussing the area of a shape. Using the referencing tools provided by VMT-Chat, one student is able to quickly point to the shape in question. The ability to reference items and creates relationships between text and images. “This” is no longer such an ambiguity.
[edit] Group Composition
VMT-Chat also allows researchers to analyze the composition of a team (socially) and gauge the team’s effectiveness. Also noted is how technology puts students in an abnormal situation where there is face-to-face interaction is missing and they are very much accustomed to. Student’s reactions and effectiveness are analyzed and promote creating better tools to support this new way of thinking.
[edit] How does it relate to the current class
We find the reading to be relevant to our course in many ways. First of all, we find ourselves meeting and learning without the instructor being present. We’ve also found that we’ve touched on many of the social interaction methods described. As a group, we do engage in both explanatory and exploratory sessions although the explanatory sessions tend to spark questions that eventually lead to an exploratory session. Referencing has also gone up in our chats for two reasons. First of all, we found out how to use the tool. Second, there is a big advantage, especially when four people are trying to interact, to use referencing to answer questions or direct a comment to a previous post. Finally, we’ve also find that analysis of data gathering allows finding the best tools and processes to ensure successful CSCL. The paper’s focus was analyzing the interactions between teenage math students. The collaboration that is ongoing in our chats is between older graduate students. It would be interesting to see some analysis on the difference in interaction that occurs in different ages and fields of study.
[edit] References
Stahl, G. (2007). Social practices of group cognition in virtual math teams. In S. Ludvigsen, Lund, A. & Säljö, R. (Ed.), Learning in Social Practices. ICT and New Artifacts - Transformation of Social and Cultural Practices. Pergamon.
[edit] Team C Statement
- Members Lisa, Ben, Kevin
- Date and Time of posting Kevin 14:25, 8 May 2007 (EDT)
The traditional model of learning math in classrooms involves individual problem solving. This model is different from how professional mathematicians and researchers deal with math problems; they focus of discussion, dialog, and sharing their reasoning in dealing with the mathematics problem. The focus is less on the solution, and more on the process and thinking involved in making the choices they made. The traditional model of online learning, which uses asynchronous media, replicates the traditional model of classroom learning. Since chat has traditionally been associated exclusively with socializing it was not often considered as a feature. More ambitious CSCL projects can use chat features to enable dialog and discussion among individuals who are attempting to solve math problems; this will enable them to learn more about the kind of thinking that is required to solve the problem, and to enable group learning, whereby each individual member contributes some aspect of logic, or plays some role, allowing for solutions which any individual group member would have been unable to develop.
The idea that VMT chat participants form small groups to learn and collaborate in order to solve a problem was discovered by looking at the ways the members form effective groups in order to reach the common goal(s) at hand. As the group is solidified, it becomes evident that the participants begin to utilize and apply common social practices while making sense of the tasks and the tools available to accomplish the goal(s). The VMT project further analyzes how the participants manage and respond to the various hurdles that may be encountered when learning how to use the new tools to accomplish the activities. The frustration of being thrown into a foreign environment, and being forced to learn as you go, can be pulled from various chat sequences.
During analysis of VMT chat it was discovered that two different forms of chat existed. The expository narrative style of chat is dominated by one person explaining how they arrived at a part of the solution while the other members of the group provide an audience. Multiple people can dominate the chat at different times during the discussion but each time the expositor tends to do most of the "talking" with the others asking questions or providing encouragement. The other style of chat that was discovered was a exploratory inquiry style of chat. In this style the individuals of the group are each more actively involved and the turns taken are shorter. Groups using this style construct the path to the solution together instead of the expository narrative style where one individual moves towards the solution and the others follow along till the leader roll is exchanged.
Relevance to the course:
- The examination of the group dynamic of online learning is applicable to this course because while we aren't doing math problems we are using the VMT software to learn.
- Participating in a larger group formed in the early weeks of class presented more difficulties in applying a common approach to learning and collaborating to meet the weekly assignments. Working in a smaller group, such as three members, provides the ability to share information through chats and the whiteboard more effectively. The chances of missing members postings in chats, or becoming lost as more than one person begins to edit the whiteboard, was much less likely to occur. Additionally, learning to work in the new environment becomes much easier as members feel more comfortable with asking questions and do not feel they are delaying the group's work.
-Both the narrative style and expository style of chat can be present in the same group at different times. For a complex question the group can start in a narrative style with one person dominating the chat until a point when the individuals in the group no longer feel like they can explain fully or don't know where to go next then the group can transfer to a exploratory style of chat and make smaller moves to the goal but each individual contributes part of the idea to move forward.
[edit] Team D Statement
- Members : Bertha, Jeeves, Eric
- Date and Time of posting : Eric 20:53, 1 May 2007 (EDT)
Group statement on reading.
Social practices of group cognition in virtual math teams Gerry Stahl
Analysis: First section of the article discusses the goals of the VMT project. (Pg2 ln16-21) It describes how to pique people's interest to join the community. The second section then proceeds to talk about methods to maintain interest and foster a knowledge building community.
The article then discusses how VMT allows members of the community to communicate through more complex means than just text messaging. It describes VMT as a forum for discussion and knowledge sharing. The next section discusses psychological features of knowlege building and interacting communities, specifically about how mathematics is discussed.
Group dynamics is discussed; there's a tendency that groups shift between cooperative and collaborative interaction. Two groups of students solving the same problems were observed. Students who worked individually were able to accomplish less than students who worked together on VMT to complete the problems. An excerp of one group's conversation was explained using these dynamics.
Lastly, the document discussed how whiteboard and reference tools are essential components of VMT. They allow participants to solve communicate through diagrams and sketches, which are essential for problems in geometry. Reference abilities allow for discussion about a particular object in the whiteboard, as well as other parts of conversation as several conversations may occur at the same time in the VMT environment.
"Communication cues that are hard to specify in a face to face conversation have been excluded from the interface." [Pg4, ln 37-39) This statement captures the interests of students discussing mathematical concepts that often require a more subtle approach to descriptions, and lends itself to reduced words, and increased imagery. However for the purposes of a humanitarian, i.e. psychological, philosophical, and aestheticically pleasing essays, discussion, it is often necessary to output a great deal of words to a subject. As such, communication cues are helpful in determining relevancy, as well as highlights of a discussion.
Within the social practices discussed in this paper and uncovered in the extensive statistical analysis were some interesting conversation analystical results. The analysis of two chat logs disclosed a socialogically interesting difference in social interaction in the VMT chat. This was the distinction between expository narrative and the exploratory inquiry (Pg 8 Sec 5.). This difference showed how one of the group attacked the problem and basically "told a story" while the others read and from time to time encouraged this dialogue. Compared to the exploratory inquiry where turn taking was consistent and somewhat uniform. This distinction parallels that between cooperation ( people dividing up tasks to reach a common goal) and collaboration ( people working together on each task).
The article states that the collaborative effort was able to solve problems that were not solved at the individual pre-group think level. As a collaborative process, the efort of bouncing ideas off each group member contributes to a richer solution, often encompassing ideas that were not fully developed individually, or experiences are incorportated to enhance the wording and solution. As such, the collobartion ideals of the group chat ensure that the members of the group who may not have been as succesful in creating pre-group solution and ideas still fully contribute to an end result. This does not necessarily encourage slack behavior as group interaction is an important consideration in development of ideas.
The differences between cooperative exposition and collaborative exploration in the VMT problem solving chat logs is the similar difference between individual and group problem solving dynamics. Whether as an individual solution setting or a group solution setting the analysis of the logs need to meld both divergent paths to truely evaluate the process. The interactions within group problem solving is complicated and the research data provided by the VMT project expands upon the pedagogies and shared beliefs of learning in all cultures. The VMT project data expands the further studies of psychological and social constructs in human interaction. The iterative approach to the design, evaluation and future evolution of collaborative interfaces is essential to the undestanding of how groups learn to solve problems within a space devoid of usual verbal and visual cues.
With respect to how our group has approached the discussion, we have used a combination of collaboration and cooperation. We make use of the whiteboard as our space of cooperative conversation; it is also where we construct our weekly analyses. The chat is our primary forum for collaborative discussion. We discuss what we compose cooperatively and share ideas and reflections on the course content.
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