Our Workshop Notes

- collaborative learning
- data approaches to documenting interactions
- in educational games, in courses

- importance of discourse on learning

- procedure
  - make a hypothesis
  - formulate coding categories
  - as look at data, get feedback on categories
  - get lots of stats
  - but lots of things we don't capture
  - want to use qualitative and quantitative analysis

example 1 CaMille
  - asynchronous discussion tool
  - where are students productive? how are they productive?
  - looked at what kids are saying..
  - students did 80% of posts
    - students talked about cog sci in context of their projects

example 2 Synchronous Collaboration
  - simulations of clinical trials for students
  - students worked in groups of 4-6 students (4th year medical students)
  - how do students with diff knowledge learn collaboratively from simulation?
  - quantitative results
  - BUT also qualitative results sought
    - looked at how the groups actually constructed the problem space...
      - high knowledge group used strategies

example 3 Studying a face-to-face Problem Based Learning Tutorial
- focus on what tutor did
- how is knowledge collaboratively constructed?

- discussion
  - how to representations of sequences, especially when they are long schemes
  - conversation analysis 
    - structure is based on explanation! codable.. but a lot of work

- naturalistic - curriculum based experiences
- how to automate process of qualitative analysis
- educational setting, university course Computer Architecture
- goal is to provide integrated and meaningful learning in course
  - student groups are to build some solutions for a client
- class structure, students divided into groups, each group assigned to a client
- in each session, pairs of students work together (intra-group interaction)
- some groups interact with other groups of other sessions
- tools used: debate organiser, bscw (group), e-mail (all asynchronous comm)

- methodology (the below utilize the data gathered from the above mentioned tools)
  - analysis procedures
  - comparative analysis of collaboration aspects (Nud*IST)
  - social network analysis (EL2AM)

- look at which things students will use to collaborate
- objects can be shared through bscw tool
- graphs analysis shows trends etc in use of each tool
- integration between qualitative mehods and social network analysis
- automatic support is needed for analyzing all that data

- how to use computer tools to foster argumentative activities in the classroom
- target people: elementary and junior high schools
- teachers brings problem to students, students must construct their hypothesis 
  for the dilemma
- students must work together and must construct their reasons together
- goal is to train students to argue, debate
- basic assumptions: 
    collaboration is a way of social interaction
    -> social interaction helps with individual cognitive processes
    -> cognitive processses help with knowledge construction
    -> in learning environments we look for facilitators that will help with 
       knowledge construction of which we assume resembles a better understanding
- methodology
  - social analysis, method of Resnick et al as modified by Dreyfus and Schwartz
    * build a map that shows the interactions and their relationships
    - kind of interactions!!! (MW: helpful for PrimeClimb later)
        declaration of new idea
	modification
	repeat
	explanation
	agreement
	done
	question - clarification
             objection
             direction
             encourage
	(arrows) --> relationships between the kinds of interactions (boxes)
  - examination of interaction dimentions as suggested by Baker
  - epistemic actions defined by Dreyfus, Hershkoviz and Schwartz as:
    recognizing, building with, and construction knowledge

- report a study of adults collaboratively completing a common multi-robot foraging
  task
- used an analysis method, trace diagrams

- multi-robot systems
  - example, foraging task done by multiple computer robots --> looked at 
    collective behaviour
  - used a trace diagram
    - can understand a bit more about the nature of robots collaborating
  - similarities to student tasks.. so this robot learning behaviour might provide
    some insight

- MooBees
  - aim to analyse their joint problem solving with trace diagrams
  - text-based environment
  - participants solved tasks in pairs and in separate rooms
  - as a bee, find as many flowers as possible
  - communication doesn't help robots!?
  - trace diagram shows where pair went
    - can see if students divided the search areas between them
      - joint information searching
    - problem: interactions like communication not represented
    - problem: does not represent time
    - problem: scalability
    - advantage: represents an aspect of collaboration which is not normally 
      looked at before

- EGEMS ROCKS THE HOUSE!
- James gets beaned in the head

- discussion
  - seating can be extended to different situations that allow us to see things
    like turning head to look at partner
  - granularity is important in game events just as it is in social interaction 
    events

- how adaptable is documentation technique in other forms of multi-person 
  collaboration

- desktop computer
  - challenges
    - can techniques that have proved succcessful in CSCL be used in personal 
      computers? YES!
    - example Ecolab, Galapagos - we ask if doc techniques are still applicable 
      to toys etc

- Ecolab
  - Adaptive Interactive Learning Environment
  - offered scaffolding
  - single user, collaboration btwn system and user
  - interaction summary records (multidimension timeline chart)
    - chronology of interaction events VS time (when does it matter!)
    - useful cuz we can add annotations to that
    - particularly interested how they asked for help
    - pinpoint places where collaboration btwn child and computer system
    - could look at number of times they asked for help, what level of help
      - through this, build profiles of users

- Galapagos
  - groups of users      
  - collaboration btwn students and user and students and students
  - video recording (similar to PrimeClimb)
    - clapper board (didn't need precise synchronization)
      -> result is mixed tape 
    - CORFU Charts (Chronologically Ordered representation of Features Used)
      - multidimentional timeline charts with events as boxes
      - know what happens btwn system and learner
      - BUT want to know what happens within group of learners
        each line (duration) represents group of user and system
      - also ADD social interaction events to chart (what type of task, whether 
        they were to form a sub-goal, whether or not they were reactions to 
        things) and synchronizing
        * found it was useful! adds value to what's happening to what happens to 
          user and system
        - example found that while they were looking at info, students weren't 
          talking... 

      * hard to define what event is and then set it up
        have to define this ourselves, units of length of sentences

- Toys
  - can new toys offer a useful way to present learning experiences for children
  - various interactions very different from interactions with computer
    - hugging, squeezing, cuddling
  - some toys can be connected to a computer
  - example DW dolls

- order and stages of school studies
- lots of techniques too

- Playground
  - compuatational learning environment for kids to learn the mechanisms of 
    programming computer games
  - target children: aged 6 to 8 
  - two kinds of collaboration:
    - pairs of children building games
    - resesarchers guiding and helping children
    * these are different kinds of learning
  - children at such small age can't verbalize their wants if they are sitting 
    on the side..
  - pairing of children (experienced with less experienced)

- ToonTalk
  - build computers by using robots
  - child could be quiet but still learning, just not verbalizing
    - watch to see if more was done when partner made commands, watch to see if
      student does stuff that is discussed between researcher and other partner
      --- SILENT ACTIVITY

- case studies
  - operational interaction (interact with technology) vs conceptual interaction 
    (interact with subject manner)

- online course in which cases were given out and students would have to solve it 
  using two tools
- students were to post solutions together
- analyzed 1000's of boards, had quantitative analysis... but many interactions 
  also (example what's happening with the students' relationships with each other, 
  etc)
- want to look at how collective knowledge developed

- characteristics used to examine how collective discourse develops
  - evidence of initiation as course progressed
  - integration from other student's responses and does this improve over time
  - internalization
  * how do we track all that?

- discussion was based on the topic of the case
- webboard used for posting
  - difficult to post and reply from
  -> this affected response

- culture is very different as it is an online course
  - instructor took a back seat
  - feedback was that there wasn't any feedback on the board
  - culture affected way 

- some events triggered by outside influences, midterms from other courses can 
  affect coursework
  
- other issues from presentations
  - is it time or chronology? 
  - meta level knowledge vs domain level knowledge
  - co-occurring events, how to handle big chunks of time and small chunks of time
    - how to handle the different interactions, sequences
    - what is the appropriate unit of analysis? different units for diff 
      interactions.. how do we combine them?
  * very much depends on what we want to measure... we must question what we're 
    trying to measure, then we can answer the above questions specifically
    - but what about exploratory research?
    - we invent these tools or companies make them, but how many times do we have 
      to persuade people to use them?
  - operational interaction (interact with technology) vs conceptual interaction 
    (interact with subject manner)? how do we know we're not just documenting the 
    mechanics of it?
    - ? maybe we have to correlate multiple sources
  - PrimeClimb tying in with mathematical learning (measure)
    - learning is not limited to just how well students do on pre-post tests
    - but what if we're specific and say that students learn about the stuff they 
      talk about?