CSCL Community

ijCSCL Issue for March 2012

2012-01-20T11:22:00.002-05:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 7, Number 1, March 2012

Ethnomethodologically informed

Gerry Stahl

Making rounds: The routine work of the teacher during collaborative learning with computers

Christian Greiffenhagen

How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games

Ulrika Bennerstedt * Jonas Ivarsson * Jonas Linderoth

The multivoicedness of game play: Exploring the unfolding of a student’s learning trajectory in a gaming context at school

Kenneth Silseth

Personal and shared experiences as resources for meaning making in a philosophy of science course

Maarit Arvaja

Collaboration amidst disagreement and moral judgment: The dynamics of Jewish and Arab students’ collaborative inquiry of their joint past

Sarah Pollack * Yifat Ben-David Kolikant

Linking teacher beliefs, practices and student inquiry learning in a CSCL environment: A tale of two teachers

Yangjie Song * Chee-Kit Looi

The role of teacher assistance on the effects of a macro-script in collaborative writing tasks

Javier Onrubia * Anna Engel

Gerry Stahl's YouTube channel

2011-10-19T13:43:00.005-04:00

A number of videos of my talks are now available on my YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/GerryStahl

These include presentations at the CSCL 2011 conferences in Hong Kong and Mainland China. My most recent findings are presented in the "co-experiencing paper" and the "structure paper" videos. Several of my past keynotes are also included.

ijCSCL issue for December 2011

2011-09-06T18:10:00.001-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 6, Number 4, December 2011

Collaborating around the tabletop

Gerry Stahl

Interactive tabletops in education

Pierre Dillenbourg * Michael Evans

Multi-touch tables for collaborative classroom pedagogies

Steven Higgins

Interfering and resolving: How tabletop interaction facilitates co-construction of argumentative knowledge

Sara Price * Taciana Pontual Falcão

Collaboration within large groups in the classroom

Miguel Nussbaum * Eyal Szewkis * Tal Rosen * Jose Abalos * Fernanda Denardin * Daniela Caballero * Arturo Tagle * Christian Alcohoiado

Guided reciprocal questioning to support children's collaborative storytelling

Shaaron Ainsworth * Giulia Geimini-Hornsby * Claire O’Malley

Building a community among teachers, researchers and university students. A blended approach to training

Donatella Cesareni * Francesca Martini * Ilaria Mancini

Scaffolding of small groups’ metacognitive activities with an avatar

Inge Molenaar

ijCSCL issue for September 2011

2011-09-06T17:59:00.004-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 6, Number 3, September 2011

Tweets from #cscl2011

Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse * Nancy Law

Student use of Facebook for organizing collaborative classroom activities

Cliff Lampe * Donghee Yvette Wohn * Jessica Vitak * Nicole B. Ellison * Rick Wash (US)

Identity presence and knowledge building: Joint emergence in online learning environments?

Fengfeng Ke * Alicia F. Chávez * Pei-Ni L. Causarano * Antonio Causarano (US)

Agent-based dynamic support for learning from collaborative brainstorming in scientific inquiry

Hao-Chuan Wang * Carolyn P. Rosé * Chun-Yen Chang (US, Taiwan)

Scaffolding collaborative technical writing with procedural facilitation and synchronous discussion

Shiou-Wen Yeh * Jia-Jiunn Lo * Jeng-Jia Huang (Taiwan)

Are two heads always better than one? Differential effects of collaboration on students’ computer-supported learning in mathematics

Dejana Mullins * Nikol Rummel * Hans Spada (Germany)

Analyzing temporal patterns of knowledge construction in a role-based online discussion

Alyssa Friend Wise * Ming Ming Chiu (Canada)

The impact of scripted roles on online collaborative learning processes

Francesca Pozzi (Italy)

Gerry Stahl’s CSCL 2011 Conference Schedule

2011-06-16T15:19:00.003-04:00

I thought some followers of this blog might be interested in what sessions I will be attending at the CSCL 2011 conference coming up in Hong Kong and Mainland China and when I will be presenting. Copies of my papers should be available at GerryStahl.net/pub by the time of the conference. The final conference schedule is now available at isls.org/cscl2011.

July 4 9:00-12:00 Workshop: “How to integrate CSCL in classroom life: Orchestration”

July 4 12:00-5:30 Workshop: “Discussing and synthesizing three positions”

July 5 9:00-4:30 Workshop: “Connecting levels of learning in networked communities”, including my paper on “A theoretical framework for multi-vocal analysis”

July 5 4:30-8:00 Public forum

July 5 6:00-8:00 Welcome reception

July 6 12:30-2:00 Opening ceremony

July 6 12:30-2:00 Keynote 1: Gwang-jo Kim

July 6 12:30-2:00 Keynote 2: Ed Chi

July 6 11:30-1:00 Session 1

July 6 2:30-4:00 Session 2

July 6 4:30-6:00 Session 3: “Towards productive multivocality in the analysis of collaborative learning”

July 6 6:00-8:00 Poster session & reception

July 7 9:00-10:00 Keynote 3: Erik Duval

July 7 10:30-12:00 Session 4: including my paper on “How a virtual math team structured its problem solving”

July 7 1:00-2:30 Session 5: “Strengthening the conceptual foundations of knowledge building theory and pedagogy” including my paper on “Group-cognition theory and knowledge-building analysis”

July 7 2:30-4:00 Session 6: including my paper on “Seeing what we mean: Co-experiencing a shared virtual world”

July 7 4:30-6:00 Poster session

July 7 6:30-9:00 Conference dinner

July 8 7:45-8:45 ijCSCL Board meeting

July 8 9:00-10:00 Keynote 4: Roy Pea (I chair)

July 8 10:30-12:00 Session 7

July 8 1:30-3:00 Session 8: “Integrated tool support for learning through knowledge creation” (I discuss)

July 8 3:00-5:00 Closing ceremony

July 11 8:30-5:00 Guangzhou post-conference, including my invited talk: “Past, present and future of CSCL”

July 12 9:00-1:30 Shanghai post-conference, including my closing remarks

July 14 8:30-6:00 Beijing post-conference

July 15 8:30-6:00 Beijing post-conference, including my keynote talk: “Past, present and future of research on educational technology in the West”

ijCSCL issue for June 2011

2011-04-22T17:26:00.005-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 6, Number 2, June 2011

Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend

Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

CSCL theory-research-practice synergy: The Hong Kong experience of implementing knowledge building in classrooms

Carol K. K. Chan

Wiki-supported collaborative learning in primary education: How a dialogic space is created for thinking together

Manoli Pifarre * Judith Kleine Staarman

An information-processing perspective on divergence and convergence in collaborative learning

Robert L. Jorczak

Comparing the effects of representational tools in collaborative and individual inquiry learning

Bas Kolloffel * Tessa H. S. Eysink * Ton de Jong

A multimodal approach to coding discourse: Collaboration, distributed cognition, and geometric reasoning

Michael Evans * Eliot Feenstra * Emily Ryon * David McNeill

Designing automated adaptive support to improve student helping behaviors in a peer-tutoring activity

Erin Walker * Nikol Rummel * Kenneth R. Koedinger

CSCL for intellectually disabled pupils: Stimulating interaction by using a floor-control mechanism

Ulrike Cress * Katrin Wodzicki * Martina Bientzle * Andreas Lingnau

ijCSCL issue for March 2011

2010-12-18T23:28:00.009-05:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 6, Number 1, March 2011

CSCL in Asia

Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

The Singapore experience: Synergy of national policy, classroom practice and design research

Chee-Kit Looi * Hyo-Jeong So * Yancy Toh * Wenli Chen

Temporality matters: Advancing a method for analyzing problem-solving processes in a computer-supported collaborative environment

Manu Kapur

Learning the physics of electricity: A qualitative analysis of collaborative processes involved in productive failure

Suneeta A. Pathak * Beumie Kim * Michael J. Jacobson * Baohui Zhang

Exploring e-learners' perceptions of net-based peer-reviewed English writing

Zi-Gang Ge

The logic of wikis: The possibilities of the Web 2.0 classroom

Michael Glassman * Min Ju Kang

Perspective taking and synchronous argumentation for learning the day/night cycle

Baruch B. Schwarz * Yaron Schur * Haim Pensso * Naama Tayer

Gerry Stahl's eLibrary available now

2010-10-02T11:30:00.002-04:00

I just published five volumes of my publications in e-book formats for the iPad, Kindle, pdf, etc. They are all available for free. You can also print-on-demand them as low-cost paperbacks. Read the descriptions of the volumes at:
http://gerrystahl.net/elibrary

Studying Virtual Math Teams now in paperback

2010-09-22T18:20:00.002-04:00

Studying Virtual Math Teams by Gerry Stahl is an in-depth (over 600 pages) report on a current CSCL research effort. In 28 chapters by the editor and leading CSCL researchers from around the world, the book covers the project vision, technology, methodology, findings, case studies and theoretical conclusions. It presents a wealth of innovative ideas and approaches. It has enough material for a semester-long course on topics related to CSCL, educational technology, analysis of collaborative environments, etc.

Until now, this volume of the Springer CSCL book series was only available in hardbound for $179 or more. It is now available in paperback for $49.95 and can be ordered at: http://www.amazon.com/Studying-Virtual-Computer-Supported-Collaborative-Learning/dp/1441956778/
The hardbound version is now available for under $55 from several sellers through Amazon.

CSCL 2011 call for papers and reviewers

2010-09-22T18:13:00.002-04:00

CSCL 2011 in Hong Kong

Reminder: Papers are due November 1, 2010!

Reviewers are needed to review the submissions in November and December. Please contact the conference organizers to volunteer.

Plan to come to the conference in June.

Conference website: http://ISLS.org/cscl2011

ijCSCL issue for December 2010

2010-09-22T17:58:00.006-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 5, Number 4, December 2010

Beyond folk theories of CSCL

Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

Can the interactive whiteboard support young children’s collaborative communication and thinking in classroom science activities?

Ruth Kershner * Neil Mercer * Paul Warwick * Judith Kleine Staarman

Sharing and cultivating tacit knowledge in an online learning environment

Meng Yew Tee * Dennis Karney

Using activity theory to understand intergenerational play: The case of family quest

Sinem Siyahhan * Sasha A. Barab * Michael Downton

The collaborative construction of chronotopes during computer-supported collaborative professional tasks

Maria Beatrice Ligorio * Giuseppe Ritella

2010-07-23T15:54:00.003-04:00

International Conference of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2011)
July 4-8, 2011, in Hong Kong -- http://www.isls.org/cscl2011

“Connecting computer-supported collaborative learning to policy and practice”

Host: University of Hong Kong, Center for Information Technology in Education (CITE)
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July 4-5, 2011 Pre-conference workshops
July 6-8, 2011 Main conference sessions
July 10-15, 2011 Post-conference organized travel to educational sites in Mainland China

Paper and Poster submission deadline: November 1, 2010

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** CONFERENCE VENUE **
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Since 1995, the CSCL conference has provided a stimulating and friendly venue for people interested in the multi-disciplinary issues of computer-supported collaborative learning to meet in a relaxed atmosphere with a variety of formal and informal events. Structured activities and social occasions promote interpersonal relations and knowledge building. The conference’s human size and structure facilitates getting to know people and learning about cutting-edge ideas in educational practice, technology design, CSCL theory, and diverse research approaches.

Hong Kong is an exciting crossroads of the world, a bridge between East and West. It is easily accessible from Europe and the Americas by direct flights. The culinary capital of Canton, it offers hotels for every budget. The University of Hong Kong—one of Asia’s premier universities—is located within walking distance of the heart of Hong Kong. A former British colony, Hong Kong uses English widely. CSCL 2011 is designed to offer an affordable global experience, including a post-conference group tour of educational and tourist sites in Mainland China—bring your family and students.
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** IMPORTANT DATES **
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November 1, 2010: Long Paper, Short Paper, Poster & Symposium submissions due
December 15, 2010: Pre-conference Workshop, Tutorial, Interactive Event & Demonstration proposals due
February 15, 2011: Early Career & Doctoral Consortium applications due
July 4-8, 2011: CSCL 2011 Conference in Hong Kong

2010-06-22T14:06:00.003-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Impact Factor just released: rated #2 educational journal in the world by ISI

During the past five years, ijCSCL has provided a venue for leading-edge CSCL research. The authors come from 21 countries, in Western Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim. The articles cover a broad variety of major topics in CSCL (e.g., technology, pedagogy, psychology, design, learning, teaching, collaboration, computer mediation, theory, etc.) and represent many prevalent methodologies and perspectives.

As of volume 5 (2010), issue 3 (September), which went to press in mid-June, ijCSCL has published 91 peer-reviewed articles by 167 authors. Each article is peer-reviewed by three or four experts on the topic in a confidential double-blind process that recommends helpful improvements. We edit every accepted article to improve its readability in English. We have always published accepted papers online within a week or two of final editing and then printed them in the up-coming hardcopy issue. There is still no queue delaying publishing—although this may change with the publication of this year’s impact factor (see below).

We invite high-quality submissions reporting mature studies of computer-supported collaborative learning. Please consider submitting your best work and encourage your colleagues to do so as well. See http://ijCSCL.org for submission details and copies of past issues.

This year, ISI Web of Science (now part of Thomson Reuters) selected ijCSCL for coverage in its products and services. ijCSCL is now being indexed and abstracted in:
- Social Sciences Citation Index® / Social Scisearch®
- Journal Citation Reports / Social Sciences Edition
- Current Contents® / Social and Behavioral Sciences

ISI just released its report that ijCSCL has an impact factor of 2.692, making it #2 (of 139 journals) in the category "Education and Educational Research"! For details, see http://gerrystahl.net/ijcscl/impact.html.
Thanks to all our Board members, reviewers, authors and subscribers for your support! Thanks to the active CSCL research community, which reads and cites ijCSCL.

Guiding Group Cognition in CSCL

2010-06-16T15:08:00.002-04:00

Guiding Group Cognition in CSCL
Gerry Stahl

Regardless of whether particular stakeholders are interested in individual learning outcomes or in the knowledge-building accomplishments of teams, the power of collaborative learning emanates from its potential to coalesce multiple people into the coherent cognitive effort of a group. The research goal of the field of CSCL is to understand how this synergy takes place and to design ways of supporting its fragile processes. The rigorous study of group cognition is elusive because successful collaborative learning is (a) currently rare and hard to identify, (b) complex in the structure of its constituent mechanisms and the factors influencing them, and (c) unique in each of its situated instances.

There are now a number of theoretical frameworks available, which are influential in the CSCL research community, each, perhaps, with its own model of the influences on collaborative learning that must be taken into account. The dialogical interaction through which individual participants form into a collective knowledge-building agency stands in the center of the various influencing factors.

The sequential nature of the interaction is what weaves contributions from the Bakhtinian voices of individuals into group processes of meaning making, as each responds to previous entries and elicits new ones. The meanings—shared by the group by virtue of their having been co-constructed in the collectively experienced sequential interaction—are embodied in team knowledge artifacts, whether linguistic phrases or physical objects. This collaborative knowledge building produces the team’s outcomes, which are driven by the team’s task.

A major thrust of the CSCL research agenda is to analyze the influences and constraints on the flow of knowledge building sketched in the preceding paragraph. Of course, a starting point is the determination of the individual voices of the participants: their background, perspectives, and abilities. What experiences do they bring to the interaction and what resources can they each contribute? These factors at the individual unit of analysis are preconditions of the collaboration; they are of interest to education and psychology in general, but not specifically CSCL’s concerns, which are more directed toward the group level of description.

By virtue of its name and its history, CSCL is especially oriented toward the computational technology and the digital media that support online group interaction. In addition, theories of situativity, activity, ethnomethodology, actor networks, and distributed cognition highlight the essential influences on collaboration of the ongoing interactional context, the teleological object of the activity, available conceptual tools, established social practices, immutable-mobile mediators, the evolving joint problem space, and the larger socio-cultural horizon.

Because CSCL is an empirical science, researchers must capture data that lends itself to the analysis of these various dimensions of group interaction. To plausibly demonstrate the nature of particular influences, they must somehow focus on the phenomena they wish to study and determine the role they are playing. The authors of the papers in the September issue of ijCSCL do so in very different ways, illustrating once more the vigorous diversity, which is a core strength of the CSCL research field. The first four studies investigate how various forms of scaffolding can guide the group interaction in a pedagogically desirable direction, while the final reflection shows that the interaction also depends upon—and helps to construct—internal preconditions of productive collaboration, such as mutual trust.

ijCSCL issue for September 2010

2010-06-16T14:57:00.004-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 5, Number 3, September 2010

Guiding group cognition in CSCL
Gerry Stahl

Online moderation of synchronous e-argumentation
Christa S. C. Asterhan * Baruch B. Schwarz

Scaffolding problem-based learning with CSCL tools
Jingyan Lu * Susanne P. Lajoie * Jeffrey Wiseman

How digital concept maps of collaborators’ knowledge influence collaborative problem solving
Tanja Engelmann * Friedrich W. Hesse

A Copernican turn for the development of flexibly reusable collaboration scripts
Christof Wecker * Karsten Stegmann * Florian Bernstein * Michael J. Huber * Georg Kalus * Ingo Kollar * Sabine Rathmayer * Frank Fischer

Revealing preconditions for trustful collaboration in CSCL
Anne Gerdes

ijCSCL Issue for June 2010

2010-03-06T12:29:00.006-05:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 5, Number 2, June 2010

A prism of CSCL research
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

Mr. Vetro: Assessing a collective simulation framework
Alexander Repenning * Andri Ioannidou

Animation and grammar in science education: Learners’ construal of animated educational software
Göran Karlsson

Scripting in a distance learning university course: A comparison between informal and formal scripting
Jörg M. Haake * Hans-Rüdiger Pfister

Distributed leadership in CSCL groups
Julia Gressick * Sharon J. Derry

Promoting metacognitive skills through peer scaffolding in a CSCL environment
Manoli Pifarre * Ruth Cobos

Studying Virtual Math Teams -- now available

2009-11-20T20:13:00.001-05:00

The latest volume in Springer’s CSCL book series is: Stahl, G. (2009) "Studying Virtual Math Teams", Springer, 626 pages.

It is a comprehensive, integrated report on a major CSCL research effort, including chapters by 29 authors from the project team and 10 collaborating centers.

It includes sections on project philosophy, pedagogy and technology; interaction analysis; methodology; software design; interaction representations; and theory.

This is a follow-up to Stahl, G. (2006) "Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge", MIT Press, 510 pages—carrying out the kinds of development, interventions, analysis and theory building proposed there.

You can download the book’s table of contents from http://GerryStahl.net/vmt/book/svmttoc.pdf or a flyer with order form from http://GerryStahl.net/vmt/book/svmtflyer.pdf.

The book is available in hardback and ebook (including as individual chapters) from Springer Press (http://www.springer.com/education/learning+%26+instruction/book/978-1-4419-0227-6) with a 25% discount for ISLS members, or order from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Studying-Virtual-Computer-Supported-Collaborative-Learning/dp/1441902279) to save shipping and tax.

ijCSCL in Web of Science

2009-11-20T20:09:00.000-05:00

As it enters its fifth year of publication, ijCSCL has learned that it has been selected for coverage in Thomson Reuters products and services (formerly ISI). Beginning with V. 3 (1) 2008, ijCSCL will be indexed and abstracted in the Web of Science under the following categories:
• Social Sciences Citation Index®/Social Scisearch®
• Journal Citation Reports/ Social Sciences Edition
• Current Contents®/Social and Behavioral Sciences
Since the journal was accepted starting with 2008 the first Impact Factor will be calculated for 2010, which will be published in June 2011.

This is the most prestigious form of indexing for academic journals. Universities and other institutions in many countries consider journals indexed by ISI to be top-rank publications in matters of tenure and promotion. It is rare for new journals to be accepted for indexing so quickly. ijCSCL has been considered the logical place to publish major contributions to the field of CSCL ever since it was founded by the CSCL community in 2006. However, now, the decision by ISI should mean that scholars working in the broader field will—even more than in the past—consider ijCSCL to be a premier publication venue.

ISI’s announcement is not only a tribute to the Editorial Board and many other reviewers who have worked hard to guide authors to meet high standards of academic publication. It is also due to the authors who took the risk to publish in a new journal and the readers who have subscribed through ISLS and supported the journal.

More than anything else, the journal’s increased stature is a clear and direct reflection of the maturing of the field of CSCL. The history of the field can be traced to a workshop in Maratea, Italy, in 1989. The establishment of a regular biannual CSCL conference in 1995 defined a persistent research community. With the 2001 conference in Maastricht and the 2005 conference in Taipei, as well as the founding of ISLS as a supporting institution, the community became self-consciously international and permanent. The Springer CSCL book series and the Springer ijCSCL journal provide crucial publication outlets specifically founded for this field.

ijCSCL Issue for March 2010

2009-11-20T19:38:00.002-05:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 5, Number 1, March 2010

The CSCL field matures
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

A framework for conceptualizing, representing and analyzing distributed interaction
Daniel D. Suthers * Nathan Dwyer * Richard Medina * Ravi Vatrapu

Computer-supported argumentation: A review of the state-of-the-art
Oliver Scheuer * Frank Loll * Niels Pinkwart * Bruce M. McLaren

Exploring whether students' use of labeling depends upon the type of online activity
Eva Bures * Philip C. Abrami * Richard F. Schmid

Towards a dialectic relation between the results in CSCL: Three critical methodological aspects of content analysis schemes
Marc Clara * Teresa Mauri

Paradigms of Shared Knowledge

2009-09-17T19:11:00.003-04:00

Multiple paradigms for analyzing shared knowledge in collaboration. Collaborative learning is all about sharing knowledge. Without a shared base of knowledge (common ground), discourse itself is impossible, let alone collaborative interaction. Collaborators must share a means of communication (language), a joint focus (object-orientation), and a compatible orientation (perspective). In addition to being dependent upon the presence of existing shared knowledge, successful collaboration or collaborative learning involves the construction of new knowledge, created jointly and thereby shared by the participants. Knowledge can take many forms, not necessarily rational, propositional, explicit, factual knowledge. There is tacit and explicit knowledge, focal and background, propositional and procedural, personal and institutional, individual and group.

Studies of CSCL each tend to focus on a certain form of knowledge and assume a certain way of sharing this knowledge. These choices depend upon the theoretical position implicitly or explicitly adopted by the study. You may find it interesting to figure out which paradigm of shared knowledge corresponds to various articles in CSCL.

The topic of paradigms of shared knowledge may seem abstrusely theoretical and remote from the practical concerns of CSCL. However, it strongly effects whether a given educational intervention—incorporating pedagogical resources, computer technologies, scripting, grouping of students—will foster effective collaborative learning. In fact, it may affect this even more when the teachers, researchers, or other CSCL designers are not explicitly aware of their assumptions about shared knowledge.

The four articles of the December issue of ijCSCL, which deal with computer support for shared knowledge, are all focused on the practical design of technologies to support collaborative learning: wikis, virtual reality, PowerPoint, and group formation software. They each presume a different paradigm of shared knowledge. The following paragraphs define four paradigms spanning a range:

The paradigm of sharing individual mental representations. Perhaps the most commonsensical view of shared knowledge in a small group is that the individual members of the group each possess the same knowledge. This can be elaborated theoretically by hypothesizing that each member has mental representations that are sufficiently similar to specific mental representations of each of the other members. The classic analysis of grounding (Clark & Brennan, 1991) that is often cited in CSCL research describes how two typical collaborators might establish shared knowledge by externalizing their ideas and explicitly comparing the propositional expressions of their mental representations. This paradigm assumes that individuals possess well-formed opinions and can unproblematically express them. Sharing is here taken to be a matter of transferring and comparing ideas in ways that typically do not change the ideas.

The paradigm of sharing an object. A quite different view conceives of shared knowledge as a natural consequence of a group being collaboratively involved with the object of their work together. They are all oriented in common toward the same object (an artifact, a problem, a goal) and thereby come to share knowledge of that object, in particular the knowledge about that object that arises from their work with it. The sharing of knowledge about a common object does not need special coordination, once the object is truly shared. A recent ijCSCL article (Çakır, Zemel & Stahl, 2009) described an example of how students in an online group worked to define and share multiple realizations of a mathematical object; once they could all “see” the same object, the construction of new shared knowledge (such as the formulation of an algebraic expression to solve their problem) proceeded quickly. Another recent article (Dohn, 2009) discussed how the affordances of an object must be enacted; in the collaborative case, this is accomplished interactively as the group comes to know and share the object. In both analyses, the shared knowledge is new knowledge for all the participants, arising out of their interactions with each other, with the shared object, and with other resources for communication and understanding, including available computer supports.

The paradigm of sharing a situation. If we broaden the notion that shared knowledge comes from a joint focus on an object of collaboration, we come to the idea that a group can share knowledge by being situated in a common context—a joint problem space (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995) or an indexical ground of reference (Hanks, 1992). The situation includes the shared object, but it also includes other resources and constraints, such as the affordances of a CSCL environment. Above all, it includes the past discourse of the group, which has created a complex network of shared concepts, interactions and experiences. According to (Duranti & Goodwin, 1992), the situation and the discourse “stand in a mutually constitutive relationship to each other, with talk, and the interpretive work it generates, shaping context as much as context shapes talk” (p. 31). According to this paradigm, the engagement in collaborative discourse can automatically generate shared knowledge as an ongoing process.

The paradigm of sharing a community. The social sciences generally take an even broader view. They argue that the shared knowledge that makes life together possible comes from belonging to the same communities, cultures, and societies. It is the understanding of the same historically accumulated knowledge, values, perspectives, artifacts, and ways of life—largely encapsulated in language—that makes communication aaapossible. In proposing that we broaden our thinking about computer support to include complex technological infrastructures, Jones, Dirckinck-Holmfeld, and Lindström (2006) tried to show how the institutional macro-level could be related to the mezzo-level of collaboration and even to the micro-level of fine-grained interaction analysis.

The existence of multiple effective paradigms for understanding something like shared knowledge is not necessarily problematic. It may be possible to select the most appropriate paradigm for any given study. However, it does raise the question of how the paradigms might fit together—a topic for another time.

ijCSCL Issue for December 2009

2009-09-17T18:44:00.013-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 4, Number 4, December 2009

Paradigms of shared knowledge
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

Wikis to support the "collaborative" part of collaborative learning
Johann A. Larusson * Richard Alterman (USA)

Earth science learning in SMALLab: A design experiment for mixed reality
David Birchfield * Colleen Megowan-Romanowicz (USA)

Contrasting the use of tools for presentation and critique: Some cases from architectural education
Gustav Lymer * Jonas Ivarsson * Oskar Lindwall (Sweden)

An ontology engineering approach to the realization of theory-driven group formation
Seiji Isotani * Akiko Inaba * Mitsuru Ikeda * Riichiro Mizoguchi (Japan)

Ode on a Grecian Conference

2009-07-14T10:50:00.001-04:00

Upon the shore of the Aegean Sea, amidst the splendor of ancient Rhodes, the CSCL community convened in June to mix futuristic stabs at truth with classic vistas of natural beauty. Preceded by the first daylong retreat of ISLS, two-and-a-half days of pre-conference events brought together groups of researchers in 16 workshops, tutorials and seminars, including a doctoral consortium and an early-career workshop. The “Intro to CSCL” tutorial engaged over 30 newcomers to CSCL in a collaborative learning dialog with 18 members of the ijCSCL Editorial Board.

The three full days of the main conference included the whole variety of events typical of CSCL conferences: long and short papers, demos, interactive posters, panels, symposia, and invited keynote talks. The conference concluded with a panel on the beginnings of CSCL 20 years ago in nearby Italy—highlighting both the growth of the field and the continuity of concerns. With perfect weather, an ocean beach, swimming pools and an open bar, the conference was pervaded by a particularly friendly and informal atmosphere. Scaffolded by good Greek food and drink, meals were always stimulating encounters, whether at the social events in the old towns of Rhodes and Lindos or in the hotel restaurants. Ideas about collaboration, learning and research flowed like wine from an ancient urn.

The interdisciplinary CSCL community has always valued a diversity of theories, methods, goals, disciplines, and approaches. Whether because of the historical perspective of Greece, the intensity of the Mediterranean sun, or the growing maturity of the field, people were able to make pointed statements in favor of preferred perspectives—without denigrating the value of alternative opinions. The tension of diverse perspectives seemed to animate the community more than ever, stimulating new insights.

If you missed this conference, make plans for ICLS 2010 in Chicago (June 28-July 2; paper deadline October 30) and CSCL 2011 in Hong Kong.

The ijCSCL Board met during the conference to review the journal’s progress. To date, the journal has published 75 articles by 167 authors from 21 countries. Through subscriptions to ISLS members and distribution by Springer, ijCSCL is now available to more than 7,500 universities, research libraries, corporate and government institutions—i.e., about 15 million users worldwide. Electronic copies of all articles can be downloaded from http://www.springer.com/journal/11412 and free pre-print versions from http://ijCSCL.org/?go=contents. The number of downloads from each of these sites has more than doubled each year that ijCSCL has existed—now more than a thousand copies of articles are downloaded each month from each site.

ijCSCL Issue for September 2009

2009-05-14T23:23:00.005-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 4, Number 3, September 2009

Classical Dialogs in CSCL
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

Time is precious: Variable- and event-centred approaches to process analysis in CSCL research
Peter Reimann (Australia)

Distinguishing knowledge sharing, knowledge construction, and knowledge creation discourses
Jan van Aalst (China)

A three-level analysis of collaborative learning in dual interaction spaces
Jacques Lonchamp (France)

Collaborative corrections with spelling control: Digital resources and peer assistance
Asta Cekaite (Sweden)

Web 2.0: Inherent tensions and evident challenges for education
Nina Bonderup Dohn (Denmark)

Practice Perspectives in CSCL

2009-03-24T09:04:00.001-04:00

Practice Perspectives in CSCL:
from the introduction to the June 2009 issue of ijCSCL
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

The theme of this year’s CSCL conference is “CSCL Practices.” It is concerned with practices relating to technology-based collaborative learning. According to the conference call, the CSCL community is not only concerned with studying and designing effective tools to support CSCL practices, but also with identifying specific educational and professional practices that are associated with their appropriate usages. In order to study practices in a reflective way, powerful theories and analytical approaches are required. The aim of CSCL research is to understand how learning emerges: on an individual level, on a group-cognition level, and at the community level. The articles in this issue of ijCSCL address this goal in specific ways.

The concept of practice is a complicated one. It comes from the Greek praxis—which may be why we are going to Rhodes this year, to connect to our philosophic roots—in contrast to theoria. Modern practice perspectives since Marx (1845/1967) argue for a unity of theory and practice. In common parlance, practice just refers to the things we do. Methodologically, practice indicates that we should be paying attention in our research to the ways in which people actually interact with one another, predominantly in dyads and small groups. According to Schatzki, Knorr Cetina, and Savigny (2001), for some researchers there has been a “practice turn” in contemporary theory, in which analytic focus has shifted from explicit knowledge and social structures to “practices as embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understanding” (p. 2).

The nascent CSCL field was influenced by Lave & Wenger’s (1991) analysis of collaborative learning as social practices within communities of practice. A related inspiration, Scardamalia and Bereiter’s (1996) proposal of CSCL technologies like their CSILE system, suggested introducing some of the practices of scientific research communities into classrooms as fledgling knowledge-building communities. As we shall see in this issue’s articles, the practice perspective can be applied at the individual and group levels of description as well as at the community one. We shall also see investigations of how practices are embodied, mediated and shared within CSCL settings.

The proposal to adopt practice perspectives in CSCL is a substantive one. It contrasts starkly with the view of collaborative learning in terms of observing regularities based on pre-defined and controlled variables of interaction. While a regularity view of causation offers causal descriptions involving sets of manipulated variables, it is less suited to address finer explanations of how observed patterns of interaction unfold over time (Shadish, Cook, and Campbell 2002). Providing such explanations is the field where the study of practice comes into play. Practices are not commonly described in terms of regularity among controlled variables, nor are they usually measured with computations of statistical variance. This does not mean that studies from practice perspectives cannot include quantitative measurements, hypotheses for investigation, specific research questions, rigorous analyses, and scientific results. Rather, the criteria for the most appropriate methods of research, analysis and reporting may be quite different from those for research efforts predicated upon statistical regularities among identifiable variables. For instance, contrast the studies in this issue with Kapur and Kinzer (2009) and Rummel, Spada, and Hauser (2009) in the previous issue.

Of course, ijCSCL is committed to publishing major contributions to CSCL from all scholarly perspectives. We plan to publish discussions of these methodological differences, their rationale and the possibilities for integration in future issues of the journal. At the CSCL 2009 conference, ijCSCL will sponsor a symposium on theory and practice approaches. In this issue, we present a set of papers analyzing the role of practices in CSCL.

ijCSCL issue for June 2009

2009-03-24T08:56:00.003-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 4, Number 2, June 2009

Practice perspectives in CSCL
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

The joint organization of interaction within a multimodal CSCL medium
Murat Cakir * Alan Zemel * Gerry Stahl

Affordances revisited: Articulating a Merleau-Pontian view
Nina Bonderup Dohn

Genre and CSCL: The form and rhetoric of the online posting
Norm Friesen

Exploring metaskills of knowledge-creating inquiry in higher education
Hanni Muukkonen * Minna Lakkala

A knowledge-practice perspective on technology-mediated learning
Kai Hakkarainen

CSCL 2009 pre-conference workshops, tutorials, seminars

2009-02-01T15:03:00.004-05:00

The following workshops, tutorials and seminars will take place on Monday, June 8, and Tuesday, June 9, from 9.30-13.00 and 15.00-18.30. Go to the conference website (http://isls.org/cscl2009/) for descriptions of the events. Note that some events require people interested in participating to contact the event organizer, as stated in the event description.

Monday
tutorial: “Introduction to CSCL -- by the ijCSCL Editorial Board”
morning seminar: “Constructing Graphical and Hypertext Knowledge Representations for Learning”
afternoon seminar: “Scratch: Creating and Sharing Interactive Media”
workshop: “Common Objects for Productive Multivocality in Analysis”
workshop: “CSCL Argumentation Systems”
workshop: “Intelligent and Innovative Support of Collaborative Learning Activities”
workshop: “Adapting Activities Modeled by CSCL Scripts”

Tuesday
tutorial: “Collecting and Analyzing Gaze Data from Collaborative Interaction”
morning tutorial: “Handling Multi-level Data”
afternoon seminar: “E-discussion Moderation with Argunaut”
seminar: “Modeling, Creating and Enacting Online Collaborative Scripts”
workshop: “Scripted vs. Free CS Collaboration”
workshop: “Using Video to Study Learner Practice”
workshop: “Improvisational Uses of Group Scribbles and other CSCL Tools”
workshop: “Interaction Analysis and Visualization”

Yes We Can

2008-11-13T10:50:00.001-05:00

CSCL in a more global context

The world has changed and the opportunities for CSCL have been transformed along with it. I am writing this in early November, immediately after the election of Barack Obama in the US and during a period of unprecedented economic volatility around the globe.

The recent events dramatically accentuate the rapid globalization of all aspects of life. In the US, we change from a parochial culture oriented toward America’s rural past to a government led by someone with personal roots in Africa and Asia and with a respect for ideas and collaboration. The economic crisis forces nations around the world to work together in order to pursue their own self-interest in a complexly intertwined and interdependent globe.

The U.S. election—viewed by many as an election of international import—illustrates the importance of an educated population for democracy. Obama’s support came from the most educated regions of the country. His campaign emphasized argumentation and reason over emotion and faith. To follow the election process, one had to comprehend polling, statistics, sampling, and economics. It also helped to be conversant with e-mail, blogging and new computer interface displays. Just as John Dewey emphasized almost a century ago and as people in developing nations have seen repeatedly, education and democracy need to go forward together.

Despite the crushing pressure to address the economy, Obama still maintains his commitment to improving education in America. He wants to support schools, teachers, and instructional technology in order to raise student test scores. This is where CSCL can provide new vision, tools, and approaches. Research in the learning sciences confirms the importance of schools, teachers, technology, and test scores, but demonstrates the need to go beyond these basic infrastructural elements. Students need to be engaged in constructing knowledge—for themselves and with their peers. They need to become involved in the cultures of knowledge building in various subject domains and to become conversant in the related media for expressing their own understandings.

CSCL offers innovative and powerful ways to take advantage of computer technology to provide new forms of learning. Too often, technology is viewed as a way of automating education and reducing costs, without changing the traditional view of education as the transfer of facts from an authoritative source to a relatively passive student’s memory. CSCL proposes new media to support new experiences for students, in which they can interact with other students in structured environments with well-conceived tasks to learn through exploration and discussion.

Although most CSCL systems are still experimental prototypes, once fully developed with all the supports needed for deployment, they could provide effective learning environments to broad audiences of students. In doing so, they would even make it possible for students to collaborate across national borders, preparing them for an ever more global world.

Mature CSCL environments could be disseminated throughout the world, providing access for students inside and outside of schools to rich digital resources in productive interactional settings. The catch is that students, teachers, parents, schools, and politicians all have to transform how they think about education so that they can appreciate and support the profound kinds of learning that can take place in CSCL experiences.

Some countries have begun to commit to constructivist and collaborative learning as appropriate to our global knowledge-building economy. It is up to CSCL researchers to continue to provide persuasive evidence for transforming our educational institutions in this direction. The attempt to promote progressive education has been frustratingly slow since Dewey first called for it. We still need curriculum, technologies, theories, models, documented successes and reproducible interventions.

The US has fallen behind recently, with its policy of “no child left untested.” At this juncture of history, it seems both hopeful and urgent to move in more collaborative directions. Can CSCL researchers make a difference and help education catch up to its historical mission internationally? Yes we can!

ijCSCL issue for March 2009

2008-11-05T08:56:00.005-05:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 4, Number 1, March 2009

Yes we can!
Gerry Stahl

The pedagogical challenges to collaborative technologies
Diana Laurillard (UK)

Productive failure in CSCL groups
Manu Kapur (Singapore) * Charles Kinzer (US)

A connective ethnography of peer knowledge sharing and diffusion in a tween virtual world
Deborah Fields * Yasmin Kafai (US)

Learning to collaborate while being scripted or by observing a model
Nikol Rummel * Hans Spada * Sabine Hauser (Germany)

The power of natural frameworks: Technology and the question of agency in CSCL settings
Annika Lantz-Andersson (Sweden)

Using CSCL tools to build the CSCL & ISLS community

2008-10-08T08:51:00.003-04:00

The new president of ISLS, Prof. Marcia Linn, is spearheading an effort to build the community of CSCL and learning sciences researchers between conferences through the use of CSCL tools.

ISLS is the International Society of the Learning Sciences. It was organized to sponsor and support the CSCL and ICLS conference series and the two related journals, ijCSCL and JLS (Journal of the Learning Sciences). Membership in ISLS is included in registration at the CSCL and ICLS conferences, or through http://isls.org.

We are interested in ideas, technologies and pilot efforts to support the community online. In particular, we are interested in ways to prepare for specific activites at the CSCL conference in Rhodes, Greece, this June. These activities include workshops, tutorials, seminars, panels, doctoral consortium, early career, papers, posters, etc. How can we take advantage of online technologies to support these activities before, during and after the conference?

If you have ideas or suggestions for this effort, either add a response to this posting or email Gerry@GerryStahl.net or MCLinn@berkeley.edu.

* * *

Doug Holton emailed me (because comments were not working on this blog):

I created a learning sciences discussion/announcements group here: http://groups.google.com/group/learning-sciences

And for the open education conference, we used a site called Crowdvine to link together blogs, profiles, pictures, and so forth: http://www.crowdvine.com/home

Call for Pre-Conference Events at CSCL 2009

2008-09-29T01:04:00.002-04:00

The CSCL 2009 Pre-conference Workshops & Tutorials Committee invites submissions of proposals for Pre-Conference Events by December 20, 2008.

The CSCL 2009 international conference on the theme “CSCL Practices” will be held in Rhodes, Greece, on June 8-13, 2009. Pre-conference activities will be held Monday & Tuesday, June 8 & 9, as well as on the morning of Wednesday, June 10.

Individuals and groups are invited to propose Workshops, Tutorials and Seminars. We invite a range of events varying in content, aim and structure. The general goal is to offer participants an opportunity to engage in professional exchange in an interactive and interpersonal setting.

Events should fit well with the conference theme and the ways in which technology supports individual, group or community cognition within their societal contexts. Proposed events can include sessions devoted to learning about specific concepts, methods or techniques, or to furthering our knowledge and understanding through group discussion and problem solving. Innovative event formats are encouraged.

Pre-conference Events
Workshops, tutorials and seminars can be on any major or timely topic in computer-supported collaborative learning. This includes tools (e.g., tools for more effective, efficient and enjoyable CSCL interactions; for researchers), practices (e.g., teacher best practices; the analysis of student practice), theories (e.g., learning, cognition, teaching, practice) and methods (e.g., research approaches, techniques, methodologies).

Workshops, tutorials and seminars provide a good way to start participation in an international conference. They bring together groups of researchers from around the world who have shared interests. They allow them to get to know each other in a relaxed, extended way so that they will know others at the larger conference events. They also stimulate the development of ideas and interests, often leading to collaboration, grants and publications.

In keeping with the constructivist spirit of CSCL, events are encouraged to be highly interactive. The “mini-conference” workshop style of PowerPoint slide presentations of multiple papers is discouraged. Workshops should be “working meetings” for a group of people to take advantage of being co-located to work together collaboratively on a theme of shared interest. Tutorials should be hands-on opportunities for newcomers to experience some topic under the guidance of a more experienced researcher.

In addition, in the spirit of the conference theme, Seminars will be offered for practitioners interested in incorporating computer-support into their collaborative learning pedagogies. These could be educators of teachers (faculty for pre-service teachers, trainers for in-service teacher professional development), university teachers, workplace trainers, e-learning practitioners, and even managers and decision makers from across all educational sectors. Themes of particular interest could include: CSCL scripts and learning effects; features of CSCL projects in schools; teachers’ learning goals and strategies; and effective learning activities in workplace training or e-learning.

Proposal Selection Process
• All Proposals must follow the format instructions below.
• Proposals should be submitted by December 20, 2009, as a Word document attached to an email sent to: Gerry@GerryStahl.net .
• Proposals will be reviewed by members of the Pre-conference Workshops & Tutorials Committee (Paul Kirschner and Gerry Stahl).
• Proposals will not be peer-reviewed. All proposals that are judged likely to attract between 10-50 participants and to contribute to an important topic will be accepted.
• Acceptance notifications will be sent out after January 20, 2009.
• Event participants (including organizers) will be charged a registration fee of $40 for a half-day event or $60 for a full-day event.

Proposal Format
• Proposals should be submitted in English, in accordance with the above process.
• Proposals should not exceed 3 pages, indicating:
o Format: Workshop (i.e., prepared discussion, primarily for specialists), tutorial (hands-on introduction, primarily for non-specialists), seminar (for educator trainers and workplace trainers) or other format
o Title of event
o Organizers' names and backgrounds
o Preferred date (preferably Monday or Tuesday) and length (morning session: 9.30-13.00, afternoon session: 15.00- 18.30, full day or longer)
o Theme and goals
o Intended audience, including minimal and maximal number of participants
o Description of format and activities planned
o Expected outcomes and contributions
o Participation requirements
o Prior relevant experiences of organizers
o Needed facilities and equipment

Community Events Proceedings
Pre-Conference Events will be published in a special volume of the CSCL 2009 Proceedings. Accepted Events will have to submit a three-page summary in camera-ready format following the publication guidelines and template for papers. These will be due by March 1, 2009.

Proposal Questions
Please feel free to email any questions about the Pre-Conference Events to the Committee:
o Paul Kirschner — paul.kirschner@ou.nl
o Gerry Stahl — Gerry@GerryStahl.net

ijCSCL issue for December 08

2008-08-21T19:54:00.003-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 3, Number 4, December 2008

CSCL practices
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

Leveraging online communities in fostering adaptive schools
David Hung * Denneth Lim * Victor Chen * Thiam Seng Koh

The right tool for the wrong task? Match and mismatch between first and second stimulus in double stimulation
Andreas Lund * Ingvill Rasmussen

Exploring embedded guidance and self-efficacy in educational multi-user virtual environments
Brian Nelson * Diane Ketelhut

Alternative goal structures for computer game-based learning
Fengfeng Ke

Automatic coding of communication in collaboration protocols
Gijsbert Erkens * Jeroen Janssen

CSCL 2009 Conference in Rhodes, Greece

2008-08-21T19:52:00.001-04:00

The CSCL 2009 international conference on the theme “CSCL Practices” will be held in Rhodes, Greece, on June 8-13, 2009. Paper submissions are due November 1 and workshop/tutorial proposals are due December 15. For conference information, see http://ISLS.org/CSCL2009.
The conference focuses on issues related to formal and informal learning through collaboration, promoting productive collaborative interactions with the help of the computer and other communication technologies. The conference theme “CSCL Practices” emphasizes practices relating to technology-based collaborative learning in schools, workplaces, and daily life.

The CSCL community is not only concerned with studying and designing effective tools to support CSCL practices, but also with identifying specific educational and professional practices that are associated with their appropriate usages. In order to study practices in a reflective way, powerful theories and analytical approaches are required. The aim is to understand how learning emerges: on an individual level, on a group-cognition level, and at the community level.

The CSCL conference and the CSCL journal work together to advance the collective understanding of the community of researchers and practitioners. The journal organizes a symposium at each conference and publishes expanded versions of important conference presentations. We look forward to seeing you on the historic island of Rhodes.

ijCSCL issue for Sept 08

2008-05-11T21:42:00.003-04:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 3, Number 3, September 2008

Explorations of participation in discourse
Gerry Stahl * Friedrich Hesse

Analyzing collaborative learning processes automatically: Exploiting the advances of computational linguistics in CSCL
Carolyn Rosé * Yi-Chia Wang * Yue Cui * Jaime Arguello * Karsten Segmann * Armin Weinberger * Frank Fischer

The effect of a script and an interface in grounding discussions
Judith Schoonenboom

Supporting students' participation in authentic proof activities in CSCL environments
Diler Oner

Inviting participation: Cultural practices in networked classroom learning environments
Nancy Ares

Context-oriented communication and the design of computer-supported discursive learning
Andrea Kienle * Thomas Herrmann

Book review: Exploring thinking as communicating in CSCL
Gerry Stahl

ijCSCL Symposium at Conference of the Learning Sciences

2008-03-29T00:09:00.002-04:00

ijCSCL Symposium 2008 -- ICLS, Utrecht

"Productive tensions in the learning sciences: Socio-cognitive and socio-cultural theory”
Co-chairs: Gerry Stahl & Friedrich Hesse

The two major theoretical orientations in contemporary learning-sciences research create a tension in the approaches of the ICLS/CSCL research community. For instance, should all cognitive phenomena and processes be analyzed as an interplay of components in a model of the individual human mind or should cognition be studied as irreducibly spread across collectivities, interactions, practices and artifacts situated in specific cultural-historical settings? Can the apparent incommensurability of the approaches be productive in stimulating critical reflection on conceptualizations and methods? Is it possible to bring the two perspectives into a productive relationship that supports collaboration on research and complementarity of results?
The symposium will consist of three half-hour segments:

Part I: A socio-cognitive analysis
An author of an ijCSCL paper representing a socio-cognitive approach to learning sciences research will make a brief presentation illustrating the power of this approach. Then a discussant will question possible limitations of the approach.

• Presenters: Ulrike Cress & Joachim Kimmerle, authors of “A systemic and cognitive view on collaborative knowledge building with wikis” (ijCSCL 3:2). Available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/g509739lp56gk040/fulltext.pdf
• Discussant: Daniel D. Suthers
• Moderator: Gerry Stahl

Part II: A socio-cultural analysis
An author of an ijCSCL paper representing a socio-cultural approach to learning sciences research will make a brief presentation illustrating the power of this approach. Then a discussant will question possible limitations of the approach.

• Presenters: Ingeborg Krange & Sten Ludvigsen, authors of “What does it mean? Students’ procedural and conceptual problem solving in a CSCL environment designed within the field of science education” (ijCSCL 3:1). Available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/83w585l5u442v287/fulltext.pdf
• Discussant: Baruch Schwarz
• Moderator: Friedrich Hesse

Part III: Resolution
The audience will be challenged to propose ways of bringing the two theoretical approaches together. The question will also be raised—in anticipation of the next year’s symposium—of the extent to which the design of instructional technologies and educational practices should be driven by these theories and research paradigms.

The audience is encouraged to read the two papers prior to the symposium. Springer has agreed to make these Open Access so that everyone can download them for free, even though everyone who attends ICLS can subscribe to ijCSCL as part of their registration and ISLS membership.

ijCSCL issue for ICLS conference

2008-01-28T23:45:00.001-05:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 3, Number 2, June 2008

The strength of the lone wolf
Gerry Stahl

Systemic and cognitive view on collaborative knowledge building with wikis
Ulrike Cress & Joachim Kimmerle

Supporting controversial CSCL discussion with augmented group awareness tools
Jürgen Buder & Daniel Bodemer

Annotations and the collaborative digital library: Effects of an aligned annotation interface on student argumentation and reading strategies
Joanna Wolfe

Appropriation of a shared workspace: Organizing principles and their application
Maarten Overdijk & Wouter van Diggelen

Operationalizing macro-scripts in CSCL technological settings
Pierre Tchounikine

First issue of year three of ijCSCL

2007-11-18T12:35:00.000-05:00

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
Volume 3, Number 1, March 2008

The many levels of CSCL
Gerry Stahl & Friedrich Hesse

The mechanics of CSCL macro scripts
Pierre Dillenbourg & Fabrice Hong

What does it mean? Students' procedural and conceptual problem solving in a CSCL environment designed within the field of science education
Ingeborg Krange & Sten Ludvigsen

A Community of practice among tutors enabling student participation in a seminar preparation
Bernhard Nett

The need for considering multilevel analysis in CSCL research - An appeal for the use of more advanced statistical methods
Ulrike Cress

Group awareness and self-presentation in the information-exchange dilemma
Joachim Kimmerle & Ulrike Cress

Last issue of second year of ijCSCL goes to press

2007-09-18T18:37:00.001-04:00

This issue continues the "flash themes" on:
* Learning in Communities
* Scripting in CSCL
* Argumentation in CSCL
* Methods for Evaluating CSCL
Here is the Table of Contents for 2:4 --

CSCL and its flash themes
Gerry Stahl

Using activity-oriented design methods to study collaborative knowledge building in e-learning courses within higher education
John B. Belbas & Christine M. Greenhow

Future Technology Workshop: A method for the design of new technologies and activities
Giasemi Vavoula & Mike Sharples

Facilitating argumentative knowledge construction with computer-supported collaboration scripts
Karsten Stegmann, Armin Weinberger & Frank Fischer

The role of floor control and of ontology in argumentative activities with discussion-based tools
Baruch Schwarz & Amnon Glassner

Putting the pieces together: Online Argumentation Vee Diagrams enhance thinking during discussion
E. Michael Nussbaum, Denise L. Winsor, Yvette M. Aqui & Anne M. Poliquin

ICLS 2008 coming next

2007-09-18T18:31:00.000-04:00

The International Conference for the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2008) is coming this summer. The theme for the conference is "International Perspectives in the Learning Sciences." This conference will attempt to broaden the geographical, cultural, and intellectual scope of the learning sciences community, while maintaining its focus on the innovative consideration of learning as it occurs in authentic contexts.

The conference will be hosted by the Research Centre Learning in Interaction at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, June 24-28, 2008. ICLS is the sister conference of CSCL, held in alternating years. The next CSCL conference will be held in Greece in 2009.

For more info -- http://isls.org/icls2008/

ijCSCL double issue

2007-07-26T12:02:00.000-04:00

The double issue #2 & #3 of ijCSCL volume 2 is now in press. Articles will first appear in Springer's "Online First" at the Springer ijCSCL site and then will be mailed to subscribers. Pre-prints with full contents will be freely available at http://ijCSCL.org. The double issue features the first articles in two new "flash themes" of the journal: "Scripting in CSCL" and "Argumentation in CSCL". Here is the Table of Contents of the double issue for 2007:

A double issue for CSCL 2007
Gerry Stahl, Daniel D. Suthers & Friedrich Hesse

Contextual perspective in comparing meaning negotiations of two small groups in web-based discussion
Maarit Arvaja

Supporting collaborative learning and problem solving in a constraint-based CSCL environment for UML class diagrams
Nilufar Baghaei, Antonija Mitrovic & Warwick Irwin

Dealing with multiple documents on the WWW: The role of meta-cognition in the formation of documents models
Marc Stadtler & Rainer Bromme

Specifying computer-supported collaboration scripts
Lars Kobbe, Armin Weinberger, Pierre Dillenbourg, Andreas Harrer, Raija Hämäläinen, Päivi Häkkinen, & Frank Fischer

Comparing knowledge construction in two cohorts of asynchronous discussion groups with and without scripting
Tammy Schellens, Hilde Van Keer, Bram De Wever & Martin Valcke

Rainbow: A framework for analyzing computer-mediated pedagogical debates
Michael Baker, Jerry Andriessen, Kristine Lund, Marije van Amelsvoort & Matthieu Quignard

How do argumentation diagrams compare when student pairs use them as a means for debate or as a tool for representing debate?
Kristine Lund, Gaëlle Molinari, Arnauld Séjourné & Michael Baker

Argumentation in a changing world
Baruch B. Schwarz & Reuma De Groot

Using graphical tools in a phased activity for enhancing dialogical skills: An example with Digalo
Nathalie Muller Mirza, Valérie Tartas, Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont & Jean-François De Pietro

CSCL 2007 pre-conference events

2007-03-01T20:19:00.000-05:00

Make the most of your trip to CSCL 2007. Come early and participate in the pre-conference events at Rutgers July 16-18!

The main conference will be preceded by two-and-a-half days of pre-conference events. The morning before the conference opening, Naomi Miyake will present a half-day tutorial “Introduction to CSCL.”

Fourteen workshops on a wide range of topics are scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. These are great opportunities to meet people interested in these aspects of CSCL and to get into the spirit of the conference ahead of time. During the rest of the conference, you may get to better know the people you meet in the pre-conference and get ideas about which conference presentations to attend.

The workshops will follow a variety of formats; read their descriptions on the conference website for details. They each focus on a timely issue of CSCL theory, methodology, technology, analysis or pedagogy.

Monday, July 16, 2007

CSCL and Inquiry Learning, Karsten Stegmann Karsten.Stegmann[at]psy.lmu.de
Linking CSCL Design Patterns to Authentic Educational Case Studies, Yannis A. Dimitriadis yannis[at]yllera.tel.uva.es
Chat Analysis in Virtual Math Teams, Gerry Stahl Gerry.Stahl[at]drexel.edu
The Third Metaphor of Learning, Jerry Andriessen J.E.B.Andriessen[at]fss.uu.nl, [morning only]
Video Wikis and Media Fluency, Erik Blankinship erikb[at]mediamods.com, [afternoon only]

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Languages and Platforms for CSCL Scripts, Armin Weinberger Armin.Weinberger[at]psy.lmu.de
Wiki Research: Knowledge Advancement and Design, Andreas Lund andreas.lund[at]uv.uio.no
Authoring Frameworks for Integrating Collaborative Learning Technologies, Turadg Aleahmad turadg[at]cs.cmu.edu
Networked Learning and CSCL, Christopher Jones C.R.Jones[at]open.ac.uk, [morning only]
An Interactive Session Using a Tool to Support Distributed Conversations around Digital Video, Robb Lindgren robblind[at]stanford.edu, [afternoon only]

Wednesday morning, July 18, 2007

Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Channels in CSCL Conferencing Environments, Katrin Allmendinger & Rosanna Guadagno katrin.allmendinger[at]iao.fraunhofer.de, rosanna[at]ua.edu
Coding CSCL Conference Video Archives To Expand Community Memory, Ricki Goldman ricki[at]nyu.edu
Assessment of Group and Individual Learning through Intelligent Visualization, Andy Hurford hurfor[at]mac.com
Collaborative Technology Supporting Cognitive Skills for Ethics in Communication, Tom Murray tmurray[at]cs.umass.edu
Tutorial: Introduction to CSCL, Naomi Miyake

ijCSCL volume 2

2007-02-11T17:10:00.000-05:00

The start of a second year of ijCSCL marks a significant step forward in the history of the CSCL research field. The journal is not just a venue for academic papers, but a medium of discourse about new directions and new understandings within an active community exhibiting diverse perspectives. Here is the Table of Contents of the first issue for 2007:

Welcome to the future: ijCSCL volume 2
Gerry Stahl & Friedrich Hesse

Community-based learning: The core competency of residential, research-based universities
Gerhard Fischer, Markus Rohde & Volker Wulf

Patterns as a paradigm for theory in community-based learning
John M.Carroll & Umer Farooq

A rating scheme for assessing the quality of CSCL processes
Anne Meier, Hans Spada & Nikol Rummel

Investigating patterns of interaction in networked learning and CSCL: A role for social network analysis
Maarten De Laat & Victor Lally

Barriers to online critical discourse
Liam Rourke & Heather Kanuka

CSCL 2007 conference website now available

2006-10-21T13:55:00.000-04:00

The biannual international CSCL conference will be held July 16-21, 2007, at Rutgers University, near New York City and convenient to the Newark international airport. The conference theme is, Of mice, minds and society. It is the first time CSCL has been held on the East Coast of the US and the first time it is in the Americas since 2002, when it was in Boulder, Colorado.

Papers are due November 8, 2006, but proposals for workshops, tutorials and other events will be accepted until January.

The conference website is:
http://www.isls.org/cscl2007

ijCSCL issue 4 -- completion of volume 1

2006-10-21T13:50:00.000-04:00

The four articles in this issue can be read—among other ways—as studies of social practices in CSCL settings, although the papers were not written with this as their central concern. They illustrate that this theme can be investigated with a variety of methods, and begin to suggest the centrality of social practices to both individual and group cognition.

Social practices of computer-supported collaborative learning
Gerry Stahl & Friedrich Hesse

From dialogue to monologue and back: Middle spaces in computer-mediated learning
Noel Enyedy & Christopher M. Hoadley
Knowledge building in mathematics: Supporting collaborative learning in pattern problems
Joan Moss & Ruth Anne Beatty

Electronic (re)constitution of groups: Group dynamics from face-to-face to an online setting
Lynn Clouder, Jayne Dalley, Julian Hargreaves, Sally Parkes, Julie Sellars & Jane Toms

Consistent practices in artifact-mediated collaboration
Nathan Dwyer & Daniel D. Suthers

Intro to CSCL chapter available in several languages

2006-10-21T13:43:00.000-04:00

A chapter of the new Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences presents an historical perspective on the field of CSCL. It is written from the perspective of Gerry Stahl, Timothy Koschmann and Daniel D. Suthers, and argues for a focus on processes of meaning making in collaborative settings. While the whole Handbook is being translated into Chinese and Japanese, this chapter is already available online in English, Spanish, Portugese, German, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese.

Stahl, G., Koschmann, T., & Suthers, D. (2006). Computer-supported collaborative learning: An historical perspective. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 409-426). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Retrieved from http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/cscl/CSCL_English.pdf in English,
http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/cscl/CSCL_Chinese_simplified.pdf in simplified Chinese,
http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/cscl/CSCL_Chinese_traditional.pdf in traditional Chinese,
http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/cscl/CSCL_Spanish.pdf in Spanish,
http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/cscl/CSCL_Portuguese.pdf in Portuguese,
http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/cscl/CSCL_German.pdf in German.

ijCSCL issue 3 now online -- issue 2 in print

2006-08-19T10:59:00.000-04:00

Issue one includes the following. Full text of this issue only is freely available at the Springer website

Kienle & Wessner on The development of the CSCL community
Jones, Dirckinck-Holmfeld & Lindström on A meso-level approach to CSCL
Lee, Chan & van Aalst on Peer assessment in CSCL
Rick & Guzdial on Situating a wiki in college courses
Fuks, Pimentel & de Lucena on Overcoming chat confusion
Wegerif on Dialogic understanding and thinking skills

Issue two is now in the mail to subscribers. It is available freely with the prepublication proofs of the full text of all articles at the ijCSCL website. The official versions are also available electronically to all subscribers at the Springer site.

Issue two includes:

Arnseth & Ludvigsen on Systemic vs dialogic research in CSCL
Kali on A design principles database
Yukawa on Co-reflection and narrative
Oshima, et al. on Japanese science pedagogy
Lonchamp on A generic model of chat

Issue three is now available freely with the prepublication proofs of the full text of all articles at the ijCSCL website. The official versions are also available electronically to all subscribers at the Springer site. Issue three will be mailed to subscribers in September.

Issue three includes:

Suthers on Technology affordances for intersubjective meaning making: A research agenda for CSCL
van der Pol on The affordance of anchored discussion for the collaborative processing of academic texts
White on Code Talk: Student discourse and participation with networked handhelds
Martínez, et al. on Studying participation networks in collaboration using mixed methods in three case studies

Subscriptions are available for free to paid members of ISLS -- see http://www.isls.org/membership.html to join ISLS.

For information on submitting papers to ijCSCL, go to http://ijcscl.org/. To volunteer to be a reviewer for the journal, send me an email.

News from ICLS 06 and future conferences

2006-07-14T13:46:00.000-04:00

The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2006) was held at the University of Indiana from June 27 to July 1. See http://www.isls.org/icls2006/ for details.

There was a meeting of the CSCL Community. It included a discussion of the CSCL journal, with many members of the Editorial Board present, including both Executive Editors and most of the Associate Editors. ijCSCL reported that to date there have been: 67 submissions, 15 accepted for publication, 8 currently being revised, 22 currently being reviewed, 22 rejected.

Co-chairs for the new CSCL Community executive committee were nominated: Hans Spada and Dan Suthers.

At the recommendation of the CSCL Community, the ISLS Board approved offering all members of the Kaleidoscope CSCL Sig free trial memberships in ISLS for the remainder of 2006.

The next CSCL and ICLS conferences were announced:
CSCL 2007 at Rutgers University near New York City and Newark airport, July 16-21, 2007. (Note: deadline for paper submission is November 1, 2006.)
ICLS 2008 at Utrecht University near Amsterdam, Netherlands in summer 2008.

A call for proposals for sites for future ICLS and CSCL conferences will be sent in the Fall.

Other future conferences of interest:
ICCE 2006 in Beijing, China, November 28-December 4, 2006
CRIWG 2006 in Valladolid, Spain, September 17-21, 2006
CSCL European Rendevous in Villars, Switzerland, January 22-26, 2007

Social bookmarking, tagging and blog feed

2006-06-19T15:06:00.000-04:00

This blog is now tagged with the "CSCL" tag at http://del.icio.us/tag/CSCL. Go there to see other web pages that have been tagged as CSCL related. You can also explore related tags, like learning, collaboration, etc.

If you register for free at http://del.icio.us, you can tag other sites as "CSCL" to share with the CSCL-Community.

Another computer-supported medium for collaborative knowledge building in the CSCL community – broadly and narrowly defined

2006-06-12T21:21:00.000-04:00

I set up this blog as another experiment in designing and fielding computer-supported media for collaborative knowledge building in communities. More specifically, this is for information and discussion among CSCL researchers, people concerned with such tools.

The "CSCL community" can be broadly defined as a scattered set of people around the world who are investigating the use of digital technologies for learning in groups, large and small. But there are a growing number of institutional supports to aid and help define this community. The International Journal of CSCL is one of the newest such supports. It was sponsored by a somewhat more narrowly defined group called the “CSCL Community” that is formally represented by the CSCL Committee of ISLS (the International Society of the Learning Sciences). This CSCL Community is responsible for supervising ijCSCL and the CSCL conferences.

Within hours of launching this blog for the broad CSCL community, I heard that a new CSCL Committee of ISLS had been elected. The members are:

Pierre Dillenbourg, Switzerland

Cindy Hmelo-Silver, USA

Chris Hoadley, USA

Paul Kirschner, Netherlands

Tim Koschmann, USA

Naomi Miyake, Japan

Claire O´Malley, UK

Roy Pea, USA

Hans Spada, Germany

Gerry Stahl, USA

Dan Suthers, USA

Barbara Wasson, Norway

This blog can be used for information, discussion and collaboration in both the broader and narrower CSCL communities.

As I mentioned above, this blog is the latest in a series of CSCL media experiments I have been involved in. I began with my own home page at www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/ when the WorldWideWeb was just starting; my personal site has subsequently grown to over a gigabyte with 15,000 files. I started up isls.org and ijCSCL.org – both of which have since been professionally modernized. For my current research project, Virtual Math Teams, I started the wiki at mathforum.org/wiki/VMT/ and website at mathforum.org/vmt/. In association with my book on Group Cognition, I have not only maintained the text publicly online since its earliest draft at www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/mit/, but I created a listomania of related CSCL books at Amazon.com and added entries to wikipedia.org/ on CSCL and on group cognition.

In addition to these instances of using public electronic media, I have collaborated in the design of new media for small group learning contexts. In Colorado I worked with several colleagues in designing, implementing and testing WebGuide, an asynchronous threaded discussion forum. As part of a European Union project, I then designed BSCL, which combined the BSCW shared document spaces with simple asynchronous and synchronous tools. Currently, at Drexel I am working with the Virtual Math Teams project developing and analyzing the usage of the VMT-Chat synchronous text and graphics environment for collaborative math problem solving.

ijCSCL issue 2 now online -- issue 1 in print

2006-06-12T10:07:00.000-04:00

The premier issue of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL vol. 1, no. 1) was showcased at the large conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA 2006) in San Francisco last April. It is now being mailed to all members of ISLS.

Issue one includes the following. Full text of this issue only is freely available at the Springer website

Kienle & Wessner on the development of the CSCL community
Jones, Dirckinck-Holmfeld & Lindström on a meso-level approach to CSCL
Lee, Chan & van Aalst on peer assessment in CSCL
Rick & Guzdial on situating a wiki in college courses
Fuks, Pimentel & de Lucena on overcoming chat confusion
Wegerif on dialogic understanding and thinking skills

Issue two is now in press. It is available freely with the prepublication proofs of the full text of all articles at the ijCSCL website. The official versions are also available electronically to all subscribers at the Springer site. Subscriptions are available for free to paid members of ISLS -- see http://www.isls.org/membership.html to join ISLS.

Issue two includes:

Arnseth & Ludvigsen on systemic vs dialogic research in CSCL
Kali on a design principles database
Yukawa on co-reflection and narrative
Oshima, et al. on Japanese science pedagogy
Lonchamp on a generic model of chat

Both issues reflect the international character of the CSCL community. Issue one authors are from Germany, UK, Denmark, Sweden, China, Canada, US and Brazil. Issue two authors are from Norway, Israel, US, Japan and France.

For information on submitting papers to ijCSCL, go to http://ijcscl.org/. To volunteer to be a reviewer for the journal, send me an email.

ICLS 2006 conference June 27-July 1

2006-06-12T09:28:00.000-04:00

The semi-annual International Conference of the Learning Sciences is coming soon. It promises to be a stimulating and important event. This conference alternates years with the CSCL conference, which will be held outside of New York City next summer.

There are a number of events at ICLS 2006 of direct relevance to the CSCL Community. Most importantly, there will be an open meeting of the CSCL Community early on June 30. This will be a first opportunity for the newly elected CSCL Committee of ISLS to meet together. This open meeting will include a brief meeting of the Editorial Board of ijCSCL, the International Journal of CSCL.

Among the events I am involved with are:

A data session workshop on analyzing interaction in chat -- all day on June 27. Please contact me if you have some chat data you would like the group data session to look at.
An interactive workshop on "Engaged Learning in Online Communities" the morning of June 28.
A discussion of deictic referencing in a chat environment with shared whiteboard. This paper has been extended in a journal version in the Journal of Educational Research special issue on cognitive tools.

Welcome to the CSCL Community blog

2006-06-11T10:51:00.000-04:00

This is a blog for the community of people around the world who are interested in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL).

Please contribute to this blog and share your news with the CSCL Community.

Everyone can add comments to posted news items. For permission to make posts or to send suggested links, send an email to the blog administrator at Gerry.Stahl @ drexel.edu.

This blog is intended to be a medium for our community to build knowledge together about the field of CSCL. Share your ideas and build upon the ideas of others here.