Analysis of Sustaining paper
From VMT
- Return to Designing Social Interaction Software
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
Reading over all of the four group statements together, it seems that many of the paper's central themes were captured in the statements. As always, writing clear prose requires re-writing, editing and polishing. Some of the statements still appear to be first drafts. It would be good if your group processes included one person's draft being edited by the other group members.
[edit] Team A Statement
- Elizabeth, Olivia, & Brian Bku22 19:31, 29 May 2007 (EDT)
Group statement on reading.
[edit] Review:
Learning takes place over-time when it takes place via group cognition. This paper does a good job of analyzing examples of adjacency pairs and dissecting the content to identify the most effective way to collaborate in a group. There are examples of "poor" responses as well as examples of good knowledge-building comments. The good responses form clear, matched adjacency pairs.
Also this paper does a good job off show how important writing / text based communication is to studying the inteaction and learning that can take place on the internet. This paper deminstrate several analysis processes that are used to learn form CBCL. Making good use of these processes, much emphasis was placed on studying group online conversations. As has been observed, with three or more people trying to communicate and convey ideas, it can sometimes be confusing keeping track of the conversation. One can assume that if group members are sometimes confused, and they are the ones who are actively engaged in the course of the conversation, that the researchers will also experience some confusion. To combat this, the researchers are very careful when reconstructing and interpreting a group’s online conversation.
Stahl discusses in some detail the nature of group members to try and maintain the group activity as long as possible. Each member may do this in different ways, such as joking, asking questions, or via other social activities. The paper embraces the lack of knowledge because this allows each new piece of knowledge and contributed discussion to be analyzed for its contribution to overall group cognition.
[edit] What we found relevant to the course in this paper
Sustained group interaction seems to be more conducive to learning and results in higher productivy when it comes to reviewing papers and completing projects. Concentration may reach a higher level in the group when the group members are consistent over a longer period of time. Also, the collective concentration of all group members may be greater than that of any individual member due to the individual limits of concentation on and idea or thought. However, the group collaboration could some way increase the extent of thinking power because any one individual can promote other individual's ideas after a original idea or perspective is shared in an adjacency pair type situation. So instead of a limited individual thought, when shared, it is streched by the group by being active in each one's minds over a longer span of time.
Looking at the Math group interaction in this paper and comparing it to our group interaction, shows that we are able to collaborate more effectively in groups. And as a result, this increases the group's intersubjective meaning making and the whole group's cognition level. The idea of forming adjacency pairs between various group members can be applied to this course since our group member's suggestions or ideas can be answered or added to by other group members
[edit] Team C Statement
- Members Ben, Kevin
- Date and Time of posting Kevin 09:06, 28 May 2007 (EDT)
Group statement on reading. Provide a review of this paper.
This paper focuses on ways in which group learning is enabled in an online environment. The key component for this is the use of the chat feature. As has been discussed in previous readings, the chat feature allows group members to create forms of meaning which cannot be attributed to individual group members. A major aspect of this process is the use of adjacency pairs, basic units of meaning that are developed through the contributions of more than one person. The use of adjacency pairs to communicate is dependent on the placement of statements in relation to other posted statements in ameaningful way.
Users can take turns, and go back and forth between sets of adjacency pairs. This is also facilitated through the use of reference tools and symbols. This turn taking in the use of adjacency pairs is similar to the ways in which individuals in a conversation take turns speaking and responding to what has been said. However in a chat environment the adjacency pairs are not always next to each other because multiple conversations can happen at the same time in an online chat environment.
One inherent problem in online chat environments that this paper discussed was that some potential solutions to problems can be ignored by the other participants of a group. This can be caused by a number of different reasons from the suggestions just went unnoticed in the flow of chat, the proposed solution was not sufficiently clear or the person making the suggestion damaged their own credibility earlier in the chat discussion. This damaged credibility in the eyes of other group members can be caused just by asking for clarification of a statement in some groups; however, it should be noted that this problem has not found to occur in all groups.
Comment on what you found relevant to the course in this paper.
The importance of adjacency pairs for group cognition is somewhat dependent on the number of participants in a group. Our group, Group C, only has two members; as such, the importance of turn taking is somewhat insignificant, as one thread of thought is often focused on at a time. However, it should be mentioned that the principle of adjacency pairs is still at work, as many of the conclusions that the group comes to could be said to have originated not with a specific group member, but instead with the interaction between the two group members. Also the same chat patterns seen in larger group chats are still present in our group namely the breaking up of larger thoughts into multiple shorter postings in a short period of time.
[edit] Team D Statement
- Members : K8 Eric Jeeves Bertha
- Date and Time of posting Eric 17:32, 22 May 2007 (EDT)
Group statement on reading.
Sustaining Group Cognition in a Math Chat Envirorment An Analysis
- This paper is directed toward the anyalysis of patterns of exchange that is termed 'math proposal adjacency pair', and to describe it's characteristics. The paper focuses on the collaborative mathematical problem-solving communication within he online chat enviroment of the VMT project.
- Learning research has usually focused on the individual units of analysis. Within the current study of group cognition this paper seeks to identify and define a group dynamic between individuals and communities of practice. This knowing built in groups in many forms becomes part of the group members knowledge. This forms a wide gradation of types of knowledge, from small groups to large community based knowledge building.
- The analysis of online math chats provides the basis for observation. Adjacency pairs of converstation analysis is further defined to focus primarily on the math chats and classified as the 'math proposal adjacency pair'. A pair is determined by question/answer exchanges by two different individuals. The primary focus of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL)educational research is within asynchronous threaded discussion forums and ittle research has be conducted on the synchronous chat enviroments in education. The VMT project has provided the primary focus for the further studies of this chat enviroment.
- The study to this date of interactions has focused on the content and methods of individual conversations rather than the conversational interactional mechanisms. The use of adjacency pairs or common sequences of utterances, such as mutual greetings or question/answer interchanges. This type of analysis affords a different context particular to math chat adjacency pair. These are viewed as the smallest elements of meaning which gives us the foundation of group cognition, the process of constructing joint meaning in discourse.
- Within the analysis is the pattern of proposals, discussions and acceptances are similar to what takes place in standard face-to-face discourse. These proposals lead to further math work along the lines the jointly agreed to proposals. This analysis led to some characteristics for successful proposals as a clear semantic and syntactic structure, careful timing with the postings, a firm interruption of any other flow of discussion, request for response, specific work to be done and a history of helping contributions. With the failed proposal, analysis included leads to the ability to build an interface that would help to support weak proposals. With this analysis and working within the VMT math project and with ConcertChat developers the VMT-Chat enviroment has evolved.
- Within this enviroment is a chat board along with a shared whiteboard to enhance the math problem solving of this interface. The attempt was to create a sustainable math problem solving friendly enviroment for students. The focus of this team is to design tools for collaborative groups. This being an online collaborative service, with strong pedagogical direction and computer support.
- Chat by definition is a constraining format for a collaborative experience and it is the focus of the writer to create both a knowledge center for study and analysis of online problem solving enviroments as well as an additional pedagogical tool for students to explore math problem solving.
[edit] Team E Statement
- Members Seth, Dave, Fernando, Lisa
- Date and Time of posting LisaG 22:46, 28 May 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Analysis/Review of Reading
The paper by Stahl (2006) discusses how the medium of online chat has its own peculiar elements. Most importantly, it is a text-based form of communication where collaboration / interaction take place by the sequential interchange of textual responses. "As a quasi-synchronous medium" (p. 4), chat causes confusion because several people can be typing at once and their texts can appear in an order that confuses the intended communication. Furthermore, under pressure to get their answers completed in a timely manner, some chat members break their messages into several short replies. Because of these issues of chat, it is necessary for researchers to carefully reconstruct the intended sequencing of texts to "interpret the flow of interaction."
The paper demonstrates how the chat has evolved from the AOL instant messenger to the current implementation of VMT chat. This evolution has created a method of graphically and textually interchanging and referencing ideas, which contributes greatly to group collaboration and problem solving.
This paper then proceeds to discuss how math chats differ from those standard chat communications. Math chats are comprised of collaborative behavior devoted to problem solving, and as such use a different communication methodology than standard chatting.
Stahl's research suggests the importance of these chats as a "medium for collaborative learning" and actual use must be carefully configured in order to recognize the highest potential of the VMT math chat environment. To do so, researchers were able to perform key analyses, with the results contributing to the effective design of the chat environment. A particular approach to analysis, developed by the team, was the "ethnomethodolically-informed" chat analysis. This was based on the standard conversation analysis process, enabling the team to first understand the structure of the interactions that take place among the students in the VMT Chat. One of the interactional mechanisms used was the adjacency pairs.
The use of this term adjacency pair is used quite often in the paper. Essentially, the use of adjacency pairs is paramount in solving math problems with this chat medium. There are three steps with adjacency pairs in math proposals. When a student makes a proposal, and another student accepts that proposal, the first two steps are satisfied. The third step is a secondary proposal that references the first proposal; if there is a question that has not been clarified, the discussion should point that out. Successful proposals contain elements which help them to be accepted by the group, such as "a clear semantic and syntactic structure, careful timing within the sequence of postings, a firm interruption of any other flow of discussion, the elicitation of a response, the specification of work to be done, and a history of helpful contributions." (p 9) A failed proposal happens when the initial proposal is not worded in a way that elicits a response from the other group members, because it probably did not meet the qualifications for a good proposal noted above.
- Return to Designing Social Interaction Software
