Roles in Collaboration readings

O'Malley, 1987 O'Malley, C. 1987. Understanding explanation. Technical Report CSRP-88, University of Sussex. Dillenbourg, P.; Mendelsohn, P.; and Schneider, D. 1994. The distribution of pedagogical roles in a multi-agent learning in Dillenbourg et al, 1994
Roles are important for constructive collaboration. Appropriate roles such as task doer and observer…

Dialogue Readings

Baker, 1991 Baker, M. J. 1991. The influence of dialogue processes on the generation of students' collaborative explanations for simple Chi, M. T. H.; Bassok, M.; Lewis, M. W.; Reinman, P.; and Glaser, R. 1989. Self-explanations: how students study and us
Explanations are constructed jointly by both peers through collaborative interactions. Chi et al, 1989 found that helping peers via explanation or elaboraqtion is a catalyst for effective collaborative learning process.

cooperative study

Dansereau, 1988; Dansereau, D. F. 1988. Learning and Study Strategies: Issues in Assessment, Instruction, and Evaluation. New York: Academic Press. Webb, N. 1985. Learning to cooperate, cooperating to learn. New York: Plenum Publishing. Webb, 1985
peers working on structured cooperative scripts can learn technical material or procedures far better than students working alone. Peers take roles as recaller and listener. They read a section of text, and then the recaller summarizes the information while the listener corrects any errors, fills in any omitted material and thinks of ways both students can remember the main ideas.

Roles in Collaborative Learning

Roles in Collaborative Learning environments (Kumar, V., 1996)
Decomposing Role refers to the job of splitting the given problem into tasks. Each task is a logical sub-unit of the given problem. Eac of the tasks can be further split into a number of goals. The goals are the learning objectives for the students
Defining Role refers to the job of proposing a goal. The goals defined can be traced from the task tate to the goal state.
Critiquing role requires a group member to propose a countering hypothesis to the proposed hypothesis
Convincing Role is the person who is responsible for comparing a number of hypotheses from the group and suporting one of them.
Reviewing role is the job of ensuring that the collaborative interaction leads to constructive learning. The reviewer summarizes the actions taken in the collaborative session for a particular goal
Referencing is the job of providing facts and related materail, whenever requested by a group member.

The number or group size of collaborating peers is significant. Small groups reduce the complexity of deriving inferences. The number of peers is dependent on the requirement of the collaborative learning task.

Constructivism

Constructivism (Brooks and Brooks, 1993)
Pose problems of emerging relevance to students.
Structure learning around primary concepts to gain the essence of the problem.
Seek and Value students' points of view.
Adapt curriculum to address students' suppositions.
assess student learning in an authentic context.
Assessment Strategies:
Use Cognitive terminology such as classify, analyze, predict and create
Encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative
use raw data, primary sources, manipulatives, interactive activities, and physical material. Allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies and alter content.
Encourage students to engage in dialogue
Encourage student inquiry
Ask open-ended questions
Seek elaboration
Create experiences that engender contradictions to initial hypotheses
Give response time for answering questions
Allow time for students to construct relationships
Encourage the creatio of metaphors by using metaphors

Authentic Activities

Authentic Activities (Lave & Wegner, 1997; Lebow & Wager, 1994; Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Reeves, Herrington & Oliver,2002))
Activities have real-world relevance.
Problems are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity.
Problems comprise complex tasks to e investigated by students over a sustained period of time.
Problems provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources.
Activities provide the opportunity to collaborate.
Activities provide the opportunity to reflect and involve students' beliefs and values
Activities can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes.
Problems are seamlessly integrated with assessment
Artifacts created by students are polished products valuable in their own right--rather than a preparation for something else.
Activities allow for a variety of solutions and diversity of outcomes.

Situated Cognition

Situated cognition presents the following view of learning: Learning embedded in rich contexts of practice. Social constructive acts are used for learners to make meaning and sense in the contexts of application and use. Tasks are meaningful to learners. Learners are given opportunities to reflect on their actions and discuss issues and problems with fellow members of the community. Students must be given valid reasons for participants to work together in a way that makes sense to them--such as shared interests and problems that require joint effort. Students' activities place different demands on students within a community to create interdependency among community members. Varying demands and levels of expertise are important in forming groups. Learning is facilitated by the activity and the dialogue that accompanies group participation in the activity. In Situated cognition there is Task Ownership, a Sense of Audience, Collaborative Support, Teacher support, Metacognitive Support and Motivational Support.

Compiling Theoretical Components

Yesterday (Saturday, September 20, 2008), I spent the day going through CSCL theory and pulling out components to include in my table. Works from Sawyer, 2006; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006, and Stahl, Koschmann & Suthers, 2006 were resources for the following collection of components: 1. Build instruction based upon students' prior knowledge and community knowledge advancement; 2. Provide scaffolding that is tailored to the learners needs in achieving the goals of the moment; 3. Scaffolding is added gradually, modified, and removed based on the needs of the learner; 4. Allow opportunities for students to Externalize and Articulate their unformed and still developing understanding of concepts. Discourse becomes a means for collaborative problem solving. As understanding becomes more developed, articulation and externalization act as reinforces for learning in an interative knowledge building process where knowledge develops as ideas improvement; 5. Provide opportuities for reflection on cognitive activities or metacognition. Give students time to reflect on the process of learning and on the knowledge they are acquiring. Understanding is emergent; and 6. Build instruction from the concrete to the abstract. When trying to present abstract concepts, use concrete examples to help convey meaning--constructive use of authoritative information. In looking for assessment strategies, I added the work of Means, 2006 to my literature review. Means provided the following guidelines for assessment: 1. Formative assessment should be designed to assess learning and to inform future instruction; 2. The assessment should provide further learning opportunities on the content; 3. It should reveal specific information about students' thinking in ways that can inform further instruction and additional learning opportunities; and 4. Learning activities are created based on information gained from the formative assessment.