Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge (Acting with Technology)

Exploring the software design, social practices, and collaboration theory that would be needed to support group cognition; collective knowledge that is constructed by small groups online.Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make new ways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. In Group Cognition Gerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are needed to achieve computer-supported collaborative knowledge building―group cognition that transcends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active media for social group cognition where ideas grow through the interactions within groups of people; software functionality can manage group discourse that results in shared understandings, new meanings, and collaborative learning. Stahl offers software design prototypes, analyzes empirical instances of collaboration, and elaborates a theory of collaboration that takes the group, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis.Stahl's design studies concentrate on mechanisms to support group formation, multiple interpretive perspectives, and the negotiation of group knowledge in applications as varied as collaborative curriculum development by teachers, writing summaries by students, and designing space voyages by NASA engineers. His empirical analysis shows how, in small-group collaborations, the group constructs intersubjective knowledge that emerges from and appears in the discourse itself. This discovery of group meaning becomes the springboard for Stahl's outline of a social theory of collaborative knowing. Stahl also discusses such related issues as the distinction between meaning making at the group level and interpretation at the individual level, appropriate research methodology, philosophical directions for group cognition theory, and suggestions for further empirical work.

Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge (Acting With Technology)

Computers & Technology

Stahl, Gerry

Programming

Zone Books

Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make new ways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. In Group Cognition Gerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are needed to achieve computer-supported collaborative knowledge building--group cognition that transcends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active media for social group cognition where ideas grow through the interactions within groups of people; software functionality can manage group discourse that results in shared understandings, new meanings, and collaborative learning. Stahl offers software design prototypes, analyzes empirical instances of collaboration, and elaborates a theory of collaboration that takes the group, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis.Stahl's design studies concentrate on mechanisms to support group formation, multiple interpretive perspectives, and the negotiation of group knowledge in applications as varied as collaborative curriculum development by teachers, writing summaries by students, and designing space voyages by NASA engineers. His empirical analysis shows how, in small-group collaborations, the group constructs intersubjective knowledge that emerges from and appears in the discourse itself. This discovery of group meaning becomes the springboard for Stahl's outline of a social theory of collaborative knowing. Stahl also discusses such related issues as the distinction between meaning making at the group level and interpretation at the individual level, appropriate research methodology, philosophical directions for group cognition theory, and suggestions for further empirical work.

Computer Science

The MIT Press

Tacit and Explicit Understanding

lulu.com

The investigations within this volume comprise a selection of seminal and influential articles and critical commentaries that contribute to an understanding of concepts and themes central to the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, as well as reflections on past and potential achievements of the field. They include 12 important theoretical articles from the international CSCL journal that expand our understanding of social cognition. They also include 11 recent essays by the editor, documenting theoretical conceptualizations and exemplary instances of collaborative learning. The volume begins with two new reflections on the vision and theory that result from this research.

Theoretical Investigations: Philosophical Foundations of Group Cognition

Networking & Cloud Computing

Rational thinking as exemplified in mathematical cognition is immensely important in the modern world. This book documents how a group of three eighth-grade girls developed specific group practices typical of such thinking in an online educational experience. A longitudinal case study tracks the team through eight hour-long sessions, following the students' meaning-making processes through their mutual chat responses preserved in computer logs coordinated with their geometric actions. The examination of data focuses on key areas of the team's development: its effective team collaboration, its productive mathematical discourse, its enacted use of dynamic-geometry tools, and its ability to identify and construct dynamic-geometry dependencies. This detailed study of group cognition serves as a paradigmatic example of computer-supported collaborative learning, incorporating a unique model of human-computer interaction analysis applied to the use of innovative educational technology. A valuable resource for researchers, instructors, and students alike, it offers concrete suggestions for improving educational practice.

Constructing Dynamic Triangles Together: The Development of Mathematical Group Cognition (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Cambridge University Press

Math games and workbooks with topics for online small groups of teachers or students to collaboratively learn dynamic geometry. The approach is based on "Translating Euclid." The many GeoGebra files used in VMT courses are pictured in the workbook. Several versions of the workbooks are available, including the version used in WinterFest 2013 and analyzed in "Translating Euclid" and "Constructing Dynamic Triangles Together." Also includes the content of a game version that is available as a GeoGebraBook.

Adventures in Dynamic Geometry

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Translating Euclid reports on an effort to transform geometry for students from a stylus-and-clay-tablet corpus of historical theorems to a stimulating computer-supported collaborative-learning inquiry experience. The origin of geometry was a turning point in the pre-history of informatics, literacy, and rational thought. Yet, this triumph of human intellect became ossified through historic layers of systematization, beginning with Euclid’s organization of the Elements of geometry. Often taught by memorization of procedures, theorems, and proofs, geometry in schooling rarely conveys its underlying intellectual excitement. The recent development of dynamic-geometry software offers an opportunity to translate the study of geometry into a contemporary vernacular. However, this involves transformations along multiple dimensions of the conceptual and practical context of learning. Translating Euclid steps through the multiple challenges involved in redesigning geometry education to take advantage of computer support. Networked computers portend an interactive approach to exploring dynamic geometry as well as broadened prospects for collaboration. The proposed conception of geometry emphasizes the central role of the construction of dependencies as a design activity, integrating human creation and mathematical discovery to form a human-centered approach to mathematics. This book chronicles an iterative effort to adapt technology, theory, pedagogy and practice to support this vision of collaborative dynamic geometry and to evolve the approach through on-going cycles of trial with students and refinement of resources. It thereby provides a case study of a design-based research effort in computer-supported collaborative learning from a human-centered informatics perspective. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments / Background / Vision: The Cognitive Potential of Collaborative Dynamic Geometry / History: The Origin of Geometry / Philosophy: The Obfuscation of Geometry / Mathematics: Demythologizing Geometry / Technology: Deconstructing Geometry / Collaboration: Group Geometry / Research: Analyzing Geometry / Theory: Resources for Geometry / Pedagogy: Designing Geometry / Practice: Doing Geometry / Design-Based Research: Human-Centered Geometry / Author Indes / Bibliography / Author's Biography

Translating Euclid: Designing a Human-Centered Mathematics (Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics, 17)

Morgan & Claypool Publishers

Translating Euclid: Designing a Human-Centered Mathematics (Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics)

Springer

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