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Imagining with improvised representations in CSCL environments

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Abstract

This study contributes to our understanding of meaning making in CSCL environments by examining a specific aspect of collaborative problem solving in which students improvise, introduce, and make meaning with representations in disciplinary domains. These situations include the embodied and imaginative processes of discovering new representational possibilities and artifact meanings. Much of the research on student-generated representations examines situations in which students are asked by a teacher or researcher explicitly to produce representations. However, we need more knowledge about how students within CSCL settings introduce representations from outside of the designed environment or intended task in order to solve a problem. To unpack the processes of collaborative improvisation and meaning making, we take a sociocultural stance towards imagining. This stance involves considering the socially and materially situated ways that participants express new possibilities and alternative situations that extend beyond the present reality. Focusing on a specific task based on maps as disciplinary representations, we analyze video data of upper secondary physics students working in small groups in a co-located CSCL environment. To characterize shifts across boundaries of several modalities including the verbal and gestural, digital and physical, and 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional, we identify emergent representations as imaginative productions. The findings extend current research on collaborative meaning making by bringing attention to the processes through which improvised representations emerge.. This knowledge is key to facilitating the discovery of representational possibilities in CSCL environments.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway (ProjectNo. 246723) and the Olav Thon Foundation. We wish to thank the many people involved in the development of the learning resources presented in this project, especially our ReleQuant colleagues.

Appendix

Sign Explanation

(2.5) Time interval between speech in tenths of a second

< > Right and left carats indicate that the talk between the participants speeded up or slowed down

word Underlining indicates emphasis on words and expressions

[ Brackets indicate where overlapping talk starts

::: Colons indicate the lengthening of a word or sound

.,? Punctuation markers indicates intonation. The period indicates falling intonation. The comma and question-mark indicate rising intonation

() Empty parentheses indicate that it was difficult to hear what was said

°word° Indicates that the word or sound is softer compared to the surrounding talk

((looks up)) A sentence that appears within double parentheses describes an action

• Dot marks where the corresponding gesture figure occurs in the transcript

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  1. Department of Education, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1092 Blindern, 0317, Oslo, Norway

    Rolf Steier & Kenneth Silseth

  2. Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Magdalena Kersting

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  1. Rolf Steier
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Steier, R., Kersting, M. & Silseth, K. Imagining with improvised representations in CSCL environments. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn 14, 109–136 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-019-09295-1

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