SIG GROUP Bulletin

Special Issue on

Community-Based
Learning:

Explorations
into Theoretical Groundings,

Empirical Findings and Computer Support

Guest Editors:

Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Markus Rohde, IISI, Germany

Gerry Stahl, Drexel University, USA

Copy Editor:

David Tietjen, Drexel University, USA

Papers based on a workshop at the

International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2004)

June 22,
2004, University of California at Los
Angeles

Los Angeles,
California, USA

Community-Based
Learning:

Explorations into
Theoretical Groundings,

Empirical Findings
and Computer Support

Contents

Introduction
to the Special Issue. 4

Part
I. Theoretical Groundings. 12

Mediation
of Group Cognition. 13

Us,
Ourselves, and We: Thoughts about Social (Self-) Categorization. 18

Re-presenting
Collective Learning: A Generative Way Forward. 24

Can
we use a Complex Systems Framework to Model Community-Based Learning?. 31

Pedagogical
Praxis: Using Technology to Build Professional Communities of Practice. 39

Part
II. Empirical Findings. 45

Co-Reflection
in Online Learning Environments. 46

Communities
of Reflection-Practice and Clash of Communities: Thoughts on the (Re-)Design of
Classes in Humanities  53

Supporting Communication and Knowledge
Creation in Digitally Networked Communities in the Humanities  58

Supporting
Communities of Practice in Applied Computer Science Studies. 64

Come_IN:
Using Computers to Foster the Integration of Migrant Communities. 70

Part
III. Computer Support 77

Student
Communities in a Distance-Learning Environment 78

Building
Learning Communities by Enhancing Social Presence:  Implementing Blended Instructional
Delivery Methods  85

The
Hook-ups Initiative: How Youth can Learn by Creating their own Computer
Interfaces and Programs  91

Supporting
and Changing Practices of Nested and Overlapping Educational Communities. 96

Community-Based
Learning:

Explorations into
Theoretical Groundings,

Empirical Findings
and Computer Support

Authors

R. Klamma, M. Rohde,
G. Stahl. Introduction to the special issue

G.
Stahl. Mediation of group cognition

M.
Rohde, D. W. Shaffer. Us, ourselves and we: Thoughts about social (self-) categorization

L.
Forsyth, L. Schaverien. Re-presenting collective learning: A generative way
forward

E.
S. Charles. Can we use a complex systems framework to model community-based
learning?

D.
W. Shaffer. Pedagogical praxis: Using technology to build professional
communities of practice

J.
Yukawa. Co-reflection in online learning environments

J.
Strobel. Communities of reflection-practice and clash of communities:
Thoughts on the (re-) design of classes in humanities

R.
Klamma, M. Spaniol. Supporting communication and knowledge creation in
digitally networked communities in the humanities

R.
Klamma, M.Rohde, V. Wulf. Supporting communities of practice in applied
computer science studies

G.
Stevens, M. Veith, V. Wulf. Come_IN: Using computers to foster the
integration of migrant communities

T.
Isckia, C. Delalonde. Student communities in a distance learning
environment

W.
Hung. Building learning communities by enhancing social presence: Implementing
blended instructional delivery methods

A.
Millner. The hook-ups initiative: How youth can learn by creating their own
computer interfaces and programs

D.
Suthers, V. Harada, J. Yukawa, V. Lid. Supporting and changing practices of
nested and overlapping educational communities

Introduction to the Special Issue

Ralf Klamma

RWTH Aachen University,
Aachen, Germany.

[email-masked]

Markus Rohde

International Institute for Socio-Informatics, Bonn, Germany.

[email-masked]

Gerry Stahl

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

[email-masked]

Community-Based Learning

This very special (and final) issue of the ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin presents products
of a workshop on Community-Based
Learning: Explorations into Theoretical Groundings, Empirical Findings and
Computer Support that was held at the International Conference of the
Learning Sciences (ICLS 2004).

The workshop generated considerable enthusiasm and a palpable
sense that the participants were heading in a strikingly (and surprisingly)
similar direction that was important to the future of the larger research
community. Individuals came to the workshop with brief position papers that had
been shared on a pre-workshop website. In the day-long discourse, themes
surfaced, became explicit and developed; they created a sense of shared
knowledge building that was directly relevant to the individual contributions
that people had brought with them. Perhaps the most productive time of the
workshop was a period when smaller workgroups were formed to brainstorm
specific aspects of the day’s theme. During subsequent days of the
conference, as part of the preparation of this publication and through
circumstances of life in the research community, workshop participants
interacted further with each other in many combinations. The papers being
published now are knowledge artifacts that reflect and encapsulate what the
workshop community learned, as re-formulated from within the scientific
perspectives of individual authors.

Contributions to the workshop aimed to better understand
learning within diverse educational communities and to explore their potential
support by means of community-based technologies. Workshop discussions focused
on intersections and relationships between educational research and computer
science as applied within the learning sciences. Although the papers below are
grouped into sections on theoretical groundings, empirical findings and computer
supports, almost all of the contributions actually span the three focal areas.
The theory reflects practical experiences, at various levels of abstraction.
The empirical inquiries involve computer-supported learning and explore related
theoretical issues. The computer support investigates technologies that are
motivated by theoretical stances or questions, and they try these technologies
out in practical settings.

The premise of the workshop was that the learning sciences
need to better understand theoretical, empirical and technical aspects of
community-based learning, in their interactions in concrete settings. New
computer systems need to take into account the complex needs of educational
communities, which typically change dynamically, are emergent, evolve over long
periods of time, and allow multiple interacting memberships. While
socio-cultural and related theories recognize these features on a theoretical
level [1; 2; 9; 16; 17], empirical research results focus on diverse learning
communities and aim to draw design implications for technological support [3;
4; 11; 13].

The design of tools for supporting learning in schools and
universities has too often neglected the notion of community. Most educational
technology still focuses on supporting the individual learner or the
traditional role of the classroom teacher [10; 12; 14; 15]. Individual classes
are seen as the focus of activity, where the class is seen as a set of
individuals rather than as a community structure having relations with other
classes and situated within the cultural communities where the students are
rooted. Some recent computer systems have shifted their focus from supporting
individual learners or teachers to supporting group work [5-8]. This does not
solve all the problems when it comes to supporting the creation of a learning
community, where learners contribute and build on other people’s
experience, combining different perspectives across classes, direction of study
and diverse cultures. Most existing systems fail to acknowledge that knowledge
is not just an asset of the individual, but rather of the group and the
community as a whole.

The notion of community-based learning is particularly
indebted to the concept of “community-of-practice” (CoP).
Popularized in Lave and Wenger’s Situated
Learning [9] and their other publications, this concept was forged in small
workgroups within a vibrant research community in the late 1980’s that
included the Institute of Research in Learning in Palo Alto as well as participants from Xerox
PARC, Berkeley and UCSD. Fifteen years later, it is high time that this
influential concept be reflected on critically, not in order to dismiss its
importance but to extend its applicability while recognizing its limitations
and variations. This special issue reflects the view that innovative insights
like the CoP concept emerge from small group discourses and are subsequently
adopted by larger communities. The small groups and the larger communities can
take on many forms, resulting in a variety of ways in which knowledge building
and learning take place within them.

It is perhaps fitting that these workshop papers—which
respectfully critique the concept of CoP and point to the role of groups within
the CoP—be published as a final act of ACM’s special interest group
for software support for groups. Taken together, the contributions to this
issue suggest the importance of a theoretical, empirical and design focus on
the group—on small groups within communities. They thus propose a renewed
concern with the group within the research communities of CSCW and CSCL, which
will carry forward the SIGGROUP mission.

Theoretical Grounding

Although the title of the workshop and of this issue refers
to the concept of community-based learning, it may be preferable to use the
broader term “computer-supported collaborative learning” (CSCL)
because the presented concepts, approaches and studies reflect learning
processes that are characterized by the following three dimensions:

collective
(or collaborative) knowledge building and learning

technologically
supported learning or learning with and about technological media

learning
across geographical distance by means of digital networks

Most of the contributions are founded on socio-cultural and
constructivist learning theories and focus on the concept of communities, e.g.,
as communities of practice, communities of interest, learning communities,
knowledge-building communities. However, a terminological concentration on
“community-based learning” could neglect the relevance of technological
support and spatial distribution. The notion of CSCL offers a broader
understanding of technologically mediated collective learning processes that is
more appropriate for this collection of research studies, which questions the
nature of community. The theoretical contributions actually enhance our
understanding of the importance of community to learning by differentiating
various structural levels of community and different kinds of learning
communities.

The tone of critiquing the notion of community was set by
the workshop facilitator, who argued for a methodological focus on small groups
within communities. The role of small groups as the locus of group cognition is
presented in Gerry Stahl’s
paper as the site where knowledge building can most likely take place in
communities. Looking at the spectrum between individualistic and social
concepts of learning in communities, he argues for an analytical perspective
focused on the intermediate level of small work groups within larger
communities. Stahl reflects on individual and social psychological concepts of
individual and group cognition, and the mediation of cognitive processes by the
social context in which the individual or the group might be situated. He also
examines the mediation of individual and group cognition by technological
media. With regard to his own experiences and to others’ research on
knowledge building in collaborative working and learning settings, Stahl draws
the conclusion that “small groups are the engines of knowledge building,”
creating the basis for both individual internalization and collective
externalization of knowledge in cultural artifacts and procedures of social
communities. The idea of looking at communities as structured by productive
small groups reappears in many of the other contributions.

A small group at the workshop took up the terminological
issues raised by talking about small groups within communities. Markus Rohde and David W. Shaffer
volunteered to write up the brainstorming that took place in this workshop
group and to develop the ideas further. In their report, they analyze a variety
of terms and concepts to describe collections of people involved in
group-learning activities. They discuss meanings and connotations of terms like
“group,” (“small group,” “working group,”
etc.), “collective,” “network” and
“community.” Furthermore, they reflect on different modes,
components and mechanisms of interaction and social perception (e.g.,
collaboration, culture, identity, history) that are crucial for most studies on
community learning. Rohde and Shaffer present a first step to a
framework—from group to community—and conclude that there should be
different requirements for tools aiming to support collaborative learning and
for research methodologies with regard to different kinds of collectives.

Lachlan Forsyth and
Lynette Schaverien present a model of collective learning for online
learning (and teaching) communities. Based on their findings in educational
research, the authors introduce a generative theory of learning and discuss
implications of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology for the analysis of
collective learning. The generative theory approach understands learning as the
cyclic generation and testing of ideas in order to better the chances of survival
of an organism, individual or group/culture. The generative model of collective
learning analyzes six different acts of learning as collective or emergent
phenomena. Forsyth and Schaverien name as topics for future research the
adoption of models for the description of processes of enculturation and
collective intentionality and the description of appropriate technologically
rich environments for support of collective learning.

Liz Charles presents
a description of an active classroom enacting a learning-by-design curriculum
involving workgroups learning science through design projects. She asks how one
can analyze the cognitive and social interactions that take place within or
between the levels of individual, small group and larger classroom community.
In particular, she explores the applicability of dynamic systems theories that
have been so successful in the physical and biological sciences. She proposes
combining a particular flavor of complex dynamic systems theory with a focus on
timescales and history in order to capture flows of activity. Charles applies
this framework to the classroom description that she started with and comes up
with two views of the classroom scenario. Not only is she able to capture the
relationships of individuals and artifacts to the small group that defines
their activity structure, but she also represents change in time.

A contribution from David
W. Shaffer focuses on the concept of “pedagogical praxis” as a
fundamentally different approach to describe and investigate communities of
practice in educational settings. Based on the understanding that different
professional practices can be characterized by distinct and coherent
“epistemic frames,” Shaffer posits that for the design of learning
environments, a pedagogical praxis of professional trainers that take a
learning practices perspective might be of greater importance than the
real-world activities of professional experts. Thus, it is not what experts do in their everyday practice that
should be the basis for practice-oriented teaching, but what learners do to become experts that should be the focus. This
means that pedagogical praxis as a means to create comprehensive learning
environments is not a striving for “real” practice situations, but
for “thickly authentic” ones.

Empirical Findings

The papers in this volume present a wide range of case
studies of computer-supported community-based learning, referring to primary
school pupils and students in university settings; to students in school and
out of school in after school programs, community centers or professional
internships; to student teachers and other professionals; to people learning
and instructing online, face-to-face or in blended hybrid arrangements.
Therefore, the studies offer a spectrum of applications of collective learning
environments, reaching from traditional educational institutions to
community-based or technology-based experimental facilities. Moreover, the
studies presented include global experiences from different countries and
regions: American, Australian and European.

Joyce Yukawa
reports on her experiences with co-reflection in dyadic interaction during an
online course in action research. She analyzes and compares her chat-based
communication with two students according to processes of collaborative
reflection between teacher and student. Yukawa looks upon this co-reflection as
a core activity of group cognition. Despite the fact that group cognition is
more difficult to analyze in dyadic interaction than in group interaction, she
concludes that in her online communication with students the co-construction of
knowledge occurred, and she reflects about her role as teacher, facilitator,
coach, mentor and even co-learner.

The community of practice of philosophers of science (PoS)
is the starting point of Johannes Strobel’s
deliberations in “Communities of Reflection-Practice.” Aside from
disciplines such as engineering, biology and physics, most humanities sciences
do not have an established, well-defined professional practice outside the
university. Therefore, scholars, teachers and students of PoS face
methodological difficulties building communities of practice with experts
outside their educational setting, collaborating on real-world tasks, and
learning from these experiences. With regard to this lack of a well-structured
real-world practice, Strobel calls these communities of (mostly humanities)
scientists “communities of reflection-practice.” He discusses how
modern socio-cultural and constructivist learning theories and approaches could
be made fruitful educational environments for these research areas. Another
question addressed by the author is the multi-disciplinary nature of PoS and
similar sciences: Strobel reflects on possible clashes of different
disciplines’ communities of practice running up against each other in
multi-discipline research areas.

Like Strobel in his contribution, Ralf Klamma and Marc Spaniol are investigating communities of
practice within the humanities. Their case study presents the MECCA project, which aims to support a
community within film studies. This project is run by the interdisciplinary
research center “Media and Cultural Communication” and aims to
support members of different scientific disciplines (film studies, history of
art, graphical design, etc.) who are researching facial semantics in movies.
Klamma and Spaniol discuss, on an empirical basis, potential
“clashes” of different disciplines that come together in a research
community. These clashes concern different perspectives, distinct vocabularies
and alternate classification schemes. These ontological differences require a
concept of “semantic freedom” and “fluid archives.”

Ralf Klamma, Markus
Rohde and Volker Wulf discuss experiences with a longitudinal study of the
course “High-tech Entrepreneurship and New Media.” The course
design is based on socio-cultural theories of learning, and considers the role
of social capital in entrepreneurial networks. By integrating student teams
into the communities of practice of local start-ups, the course offers learning
opportunities to students, companies and academia. The student teams are
connected to each other and to their supervisors in academia, and practice
through a community system. Moreover, the course is accompanied by a series of
lectures and group discussions that include extra-academic experts and people
with start-up company experience.

Gunnar Stevens,
Michael Veith and Volker Wulf discuss a project aimed at fostering
integrative community processes by deploying computer facilities to German and
immigrant primary school children and their parents. Influenced by the
MIT-approach of Computer Clubhouses, the authors introduced a computer lab, an
interactive course design and a primarily volunteer-based facilitator/coaching
concept to German students and Turkish immigrant pupils in Bonn, Germany.
By integrating pupils and their parents and by explicitly inviting Turkish
immigrant and German families to their “Come_IN club,” Stevens et
al. aim to foster integrative processes in the multi-cultural neighbourhood. By
collaboration in cross-cultural and multi-generation project groups and on
personally relevant tasks (e.g., the creation of multi-media family histories),
cross-community building and intercultural learning should be established. The
attractiveness of computer technologies is expected to play a role as a
motivational factor and as an “entrance card” into the immigrant
community. The authors present first findings of this ongoing project,
indicating a very strong interest and involvement of the target groups.

Computer Support

The papers in this section explicitly take up issues of
technology by experimenting in specific situated contexts of community
learning.

Thierry Isckia and
Charles Delalonde present a case study of an online course for MIS studies.
The authors evaluate course design and technological support with observations
and interviews of students participating in an online course using Microsoft
Excel. Their findings show evidence of an inefficient use of discussion forums
and the absence of an effective (online) learning community. Isckia and
Delalonde end up with several recommendations for improved course design and
some rules for more efficient online interaction.

In his case study of a blended learning university course in
a “small scale, multiple satellite campuses model” Woei Hung investigates the impact of
social presence, intimacy and immediacy on learning processes and outcomes. University of Arizona South
offered a course for students distributed across southeast Arizona. To overcome spatial distances and
to reduce travel and organization costs, the university offered three modes of
participation in the course: attendance in the in-class meeting with the
teacher on a local campus, attendance in another classroom with other students
to which the lecture was broadcast online using video-conferencing, and
following the lecture online with videoconferencing from home offices. This
educational setting is called a “blended instructional delivery
method” and it was evaluated by observations in the classrooms and
interviews with participants. The main findings demonstrate evidence for the
relevance of social presence and information richness of the learning
environment. The blended instructional delivery method proved to be a promising
learning environment, even for situations in which physical presence is not
possible.

As described by Amon
Millner, the Hook-ups initiative gets children and youth in community
technology centers (such as local computer clubhouses) engaged in the
development of so-called “Hook-ups.” Hook-ups are physical objects
(like joysticks, toys, every-day artifacts, tools such as scissors, etc.) that
work as human-computer interfaces by controlling games, animations and other
computer programs. Based on the constructionist theory of learning and on the
approach of “learning through design,” ten 18-year-old youths were
motivated to play with computers (digital devices) and everyday objects with
which they are familiar (physical devices), and create Hook-ups by using
sensors, wires and a specific kind of a Hook-up interface board to connect them
to each other and develop computer programs (by “simple scratch”
programming) that can be influenced by manipulation of the physical objects.
Millner presents some illustrative examples that give evidence for the success
of these Hook-ups projects.

Daniel Suthers,
Violet Harada, Joyce Yukawa and Viil Lid report on the Hawai’i
Networked Learning Communities (HNLC) project, which aims to support teachers
in enabling students in disadvantaged rural schools to attain high standards in
science, math and technology. A first evaluation of a so-called “virtual
community center” shows that the focused target group of teachers did not
use the system frequently. Probably caused by different expectations of
developers and potential users, this insufficient use of the system leads the
authors to several questions concerning a redesign and/or re-launch of the
virtual community center. Suthers et al. conclude that they should focus not on
one community of teachers but on “nested and overlapping educational
communities,” including different disciplines, different schools and even
broader communities of stakeholders like parents, employers and administrative
representatives. Furthermore, the different kinds of practices that should be
supported and the nature of the educational system (e.g., technical,
socio-organizational, etc.) to be built are discussed.

NOTE

The articles in this issue were revisions and extensions of
position papers submitted for a workshop at the 2004 International Conference
of the Learning Sciences (ICLS). The ICLS and CSCL conference series are now
sponsored by the International Society of the Learning Sciences (see ISLS.org), which publishes the new International Journal of Computer-Supported
Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL.org) as
well as the Journal of the Learning
Sciences. The authors in this issue have all been invited to submit longer
versions of these papers to ijCSCL for its 2006 premiere volume.

REFERENCES

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[3.] Cobb S, Meale H, Crosier J, et al.
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[4.] Daradoumis, T. and Marques, J.M.
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[5.] Dettling, W. and Schubert, P. 2002.
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[6.] Harasim, L. 2003. What makes
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[7.] Janneck, M. and Bleek, W.G. 2002.
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[8.] Klamma, R., Jarke, M., Hollender,
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[9.] Lave, J. and Wenger, E. 1991.
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[10.] Palloff, R. M. and Pratt, K.
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[11.] Pape, B., Reinecke, L., Rohde,
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[16.] Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of
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Part I. Theoretical Groundings

Mediation of Group Cognition

Gerry Stahl

College
of Information Science
and Technology

Drexel University, Philadelphia,
PA

[email-masked]

1. mediation of group cognition

The term “community-based learning” can refer to
a variety of forms of learning. One can, for instance, insist on an
individualistic notion of learning and argue that individual learning can be
enhanced by factors that may influence it from a supportive community
environment. At the other theoretical extreme, one can propose a social
conception of learning and claim that most important knowledge building takes
place at the community level, while individual learning is a secondary matter
of internalization, acculturation or increased participation in community.
Here, we will stake out a middle ground: that community-based learning should
be analyzed at the intermediate level of small groups of individuals within the
community.[1]
We point out that small groups typically mediate the relationship of
communities to their members and we propose a consideration of small group
cognition as an alternative methodological focus to either cognition in the
head of individuals or the cultural knowledge of a whole community. This
approach has practical implications for CSCL and CSCW: collaboration is taken
to be a potential emergent phenomenon of small group interaction, and the
computer support of collaboration is analyzed as an enabling technology whose
design and use forms and transforms the nature of the interactions.

Let us consider this article’s title a word at a time.
Mediation is the most complex and
unfamiliar term. In popular and legal usage, it might refer to the intervention
of a third party to resolve a dispute between two people. In philosophy, it is
related to media, middle and intermediate. So in CSCL or CSCW, we can say that a software
environment provides a medium for
collaboration or that it plays an intermediate
role in the midst of the
collaborators. The contact between the collaborators is not direct or im-mediate, but is mediated by the software. Recognizing that when human interaction
takes place through a technological medium the technical characteristics
influence—or mediate—the
nature of the interaction, we can inquire into the effects of various media on
collaboration. For a given task, for instance, should people use a text-based,
asynchronous medium? How does this choice both facilitate and constrain their
interaction? If the software intervenes between collaborating people, how
should it represent them to each other so as to promote social bonding and
understanding of each other’s work?

The preposition in the phrase is ambiguous. Is of to be taken in a passive or
possessive sense? Does the mediation of
group cognition refer to how the group cognition is mediated by the technology?
Or, conversely, does it refer to how collaboration and shared meaning are
mediated by the group cognition’s act of mediating? This ambiguity is not
accidental: in processes of mediation, that which is mediated, that which
mediates and the mediation itself tend to merge into a process of
co-determination in which each is defined and refined by the others.

By itself, the term group
is quite straight-forward. In this context, we can take it to refer to a small
set of people, usually numbering about three to six. But combined with the term
cognition, it strikes many people as
counter-intuitive. This is because cognition is often assumed to be associated
with psychological processes in individual minds.

The usual story about cognition, at least in the Western
culture of the past three hundred years, goes something like this: an
individual experiences reality through his (sic,
the paradigmatic rational thinker in this tradition is often assumed to be
male) senses. He thinks about this experience in his mind; cognition, stemming from the Latin cogito for “I think,” refers
to mental activities that take place in the individual thinker’s head. He
may articulate a mental thought by putting it into language, stating it as a
linguistic proposition whose truth value is a function of the
proposition’s correspondence with a state of affairs in the world.
Language is a medium for transferring meanings from one mind to another by
representing reality. The recipient of a stated proposition understands its
meaning based on his own sense experience as well as his rather unproblematic
understanding of the meanings of language.

The story based on the mediation of group cognition is
rather different: in this view, language is an infinitely generative system of
symbolic artifacts (words, phrases, genres, etc.) that embody the cultural
experiences of a community. It is a social product of the interaction of
groups—not primarily of individuals—discussing and acting in the
world in culturally mediated ways. Individuals who are socialized into the
community learn to speak and understand language as part of their learning in
order to participate in that community. In the process, they internalize the
use of language: e.g., as silent self-talk, internal dialog, rehearsed talk,
narratives of rational accountability, senses of morality, conflicted dream lives,
habits, personal identities and their tacit background knowledge largely
preserved in language understanding. In this story, cognition takes place
primarily in group processes of inter-personal interaction, including
mother-child, best friends, husband-wife, teacher-student, boss-employee,
extended family, social network, gang, tribe, neighborhood, community of
practice, etc. The products of cognition—thoughts—exist in
discourse, symbolic representations, meaningful gestures, patterns of behavior;
they persist in texts and other inscriptions, in physical artifacts, in
computer databases, in cultural standards and in the memories of individual
minds. Individual cognition emerges as a secondary effect, although it later
seems to acquire a dominant role in our introspective narratives.

Most people have trouble accepting the group-based story at
first and then starting to view collaborative phenomena in these terms. Let us
take a closer look at the philosophical view which is sedimented in the term
“mediation.” It belongs to a tradition that undertook a fundamental
critique of the individualistic perspective that goes back to Descartes and
even Plato, and that underlies common folk theories about cognition.

2. Deconstructing Mediation

We can start to deconstruct the term mediation as used in CSCL and CSCW by looking at its use in Lave
& Wenger’s seminal Situated
Learning [2]:

“Briefly, a theory of social
practice emphasizes the relational interdependency of agent and world,
activity, meaning, cognition, learning and knowing…. Knowledge of the
socially constituted world is socially mediated and open ended.”

This theory of social practice can be traced back to Hegel
and Marx by way of Vygotsky. Vygotsky described what is distinctive to human
cognition, psychological processes that are not simply biological abilities, as
mediated cognition. He analyzed how
both signs (words, gestures) and tools (instruments) act as artifacts that
mediate human thought and behavior—and he left the way open for other
forms of mediation: “A host of other mediated activities might be named;
cognitive activity is not limited to the use of tools or signs” [5].
Vygotsky recommended replacing the exclusive focus on individual development
with a “zone of proximal development” that assessed group
cognition, the ability of small groups to achieve intellectual results [5].

Vygotsky attributes the concept of indirect or mediated
activity to Hegel and Marx. Where Hegel loved to analyze how two phenomena
constitute each other dialectically—such as the master and slave whose
identity arises through their relationship to each other—Marx always
showed how the relationships arose in concrete socio-economic history, such as
the rise of conflict between the capitalist class and the working class with
the establishment of commodity exchange and wage labor. The minds, identities
and social relations of individuals are mediated and formed by the primary
factors of the contexts in which they are situated.

The term mediation
takes on a variety of interrelated meanings and roles in discussions of social
theory. The point here is to start to think of group collaboration software as
artifacts that mediate the cognition of their individual users and support the
group cognition of their user community.

3. Mediation by Groups

Small groups are the engines of knowledge building. The
knowing that small groups build up in manifold forms is what becomes
internalized by their members as individual learning and externalized in their
communities as certifiable knowledge. At least, that is a central premise of
this article.

Although we can see many examples of the decisive role of
small groups, their pivotal function is rarely acknowledged. For instance, the
two prevailing paradigms of learning in CSCL—which may be referred to as
the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor [3]—focus on the
individual and the community respectively, not on the intermediate small group.
In the acquisition metaphor, learning consists in the acquisition of knowledge
by an individual; for instance, a student acquires facts from a teacher’s
lesson. In the participation metaphor, learning consists in knowledgeable
participation in a community of practice; for instance, an apprentice becomes a
more skilled practitioner of a trade. But if one looks closely at the examples
typically given to illustrate each paradigm, one sees that there is usually a
small group at work in the specific learning situation. In a healthy classroom
there are likely to be cliques of students learning together in subtle ways,
even if the lesson is not organized as collaborative learning with formal group
work. Their group practices may be structured in ways that support individual
participants to learn as the group builds knowledge. The peer group may also
resist the official educational goals; the small group defines what is to be
valued as learning. In apprenticeship training, a master is likely to work with
a few apprentices, and they work together in various ways as a small group; it
is not as though all the apprentice tailors or carpenters or architects in a
city are being trained together. The community of practice functions through an
effective division into small working groups.

Some theories, like activity theory [1], insist on viewing
learning at both the individual and the community level. Although their
examples again typically feature small groups, the general theory highlights
the individual and the large community, but has no theoretical representation
of the critical small groups in which individuals carry on their concrete
interactions and into which the community is hierarchically structured.

My own experience in research collaborations and in my
apprenticeships in philosophy and computer science impressed me with the
importance of working groups, reading circles and informal professional
discussion occasions for the genesis of new ideas and insights. The same can be
seen on a world-historical scale. Quantum jumps in human knowledge emerge from
centers of group interaction: the Bauhaus designers at Weimar,
the post-impressionist artists in Paris salons,
the Vienna Circle,
the Frankfurt School—in the past these
communities were necessarily geographic locations where people could come
together in small groups at the same time and place.

The obvious question, once we recognize the catalytic role
of small groups in knowledge building, is: can we design computer-supported
environments to create effective groups across time and space? In order to
achieve this, we need a degree of understanding of small group cognition that
does not currently exist. In order to design effective mediated collaboration,
we need to develop a theory of mediated collaboration based on a design
research agenda of analysis of small group cognition.

Most theories of knowledge building in working and learning
have focused primarily on the two extreme scales: the individual unit of analysis as the acquirer of knowledge and the community unit of analysis as the context within which participation takes place. We now need
to focus on the intermediate scale: the small
group unit of analysis as the discourse
in which knowledge actually
emerges.

Following are some research hypotheses for a theory of small
group cognition:

The
small group is the unit that mediates between individual learning and community learning.

Community
participation takes place
primarily within small group activities.

Individual
learning is acquired
through participation in these small group activities.

Both
individual identities and community practices are formed through small group activities.

Here are some theoretical issues to be investigated in such
a research program focused on the small group unit of analysis:

Can
we make learning visible in group discourse (so we do not have to rely
upon measures of indirect learning outcomes)?

Can
we identify meaning-making and knowledge-building at the group unit?

Can
we say that it is possible for a group, as such, to think, learn, build
knowledge or construct meanings that cannot be attributed to any of the
group members individually?

Can
processes of group cognition provide a basis for individual cognition and
learning?

The size of groups can vary enormously. Our examples tend to
be of small groups of a few people meeting for short periods. Given the
hypothesized importance of this scale, it is surprising how little research on
computer-supported collaboration has focused methodologically on this unit.
Traditional approaches to learning measure effects on individuals. More recent
writings talk about communities of practice. Many studies of collaboration that
do talk of groups look only at dyads, where interactions are easier to describe
and qualitatively different from those in larger small groups.

The emphasis on the group as a unit of analysis belongs at
the foundation of a science of collaboration. It is not just a matter of
claiming that it is time to focus software development on groupware and to
develop appropriate techniques (e.g., for assessment of groupware). It is also
a methodological rejection of individualism as a focus of empirical analysis
and cognitive theory. Software should support cooperative work and
collaborative learning; it should be assessed at the group level and it should
be designed to foster group cognition. For that, we need a fitting theoretical
framework centered on an understanding of the role of small groups and the
mediation of group cognition.

4. REFERENCES

[1.] Engeström, Y. 1999. Activity theory
and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen
& R.-L. Punamäki (Eds.), Perspectives
on activity theory Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 19--38.

[2.] Lave, J., & Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral
participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

[3.] Sfard, A. 1998. On two metaphors
for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2): 4--13.

[4.] Stahl, G. (in press). Group cognition: Computer support for
collaborative knowledge building. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/mit/.

[5.] Vygotsky, L. 1930/1978. Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Us, Ourselves, and We: Thoughts about
Social (Self-) Categorization

Markus Rohde

International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI), Bonn, Germany.

[email-masked]

David Williamson Shaffer

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Educational
Psychology, Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory, Madison, WI.

[email-masked]

ABSTRACT

In a recent Workshop on community-based learning at the 6th
International Conference on Learning Sciences (ICLS 2004), one persistent theme
was the variety of terms used to describe collections of people (group,
community, network, collective) and components of interaction (culture,
identity, collaboration, cooperation) in group learning activities. Here, we
describe some of the thinking that emerged in those discussions, not as a
comprehensive literature review or completely elaborated socio-cultural theory,
but rather as an invitation to further discussion. We suggest that a group
is the most generic and general social category: all of the analytical units in
the literature on collective learning - teams, social networks, and communities
- are groups. We argue that these other terms have additional structural
characteristics that make them distinct subsets of the generic term group.
For example, a team is a group with a common task, a network is a
group with strong social ties, and a community is a group with a shared
culture. We propose a two-dimensional space of social organizations
characterized by shared culture and shared interaction, and suggest
both individuals and collectives show a developmental history through the space
of collectives, moving from loose group affiliation to increasing
identification with, development of, and participation in shared interactions
within a shared culture. This analysis suggests, we argue, that: (a) tools to
support “collaboration” may need different affordances for
different kinds of collectives; (b) understanding different kinds of
collectives requires different methodologies; and (c) culture plays a prominent
role in the space of collectives we describe, and thus, we argue, should play a
significant role in the analysis of any community. We hope that this brief
discussion will lead to further work on the social entities within which group
learning takes place, on the processes of learning in such settings, and on the
technologies that can support such processes.

1. INTRODUCTION

They came as a group
to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! The
whole community is holy.” —Numbers 16:3

1.1. Collectives as Subjects in Learning Processes

Much recent work on socio-cultural theories of learning
focuses on the processes of collaborative or (more precisely) collective
learning - that is, on how social collectives generate understanding through
group learning activities. In such studies, the collective (classes, learning
groups, lab groups, teams, learning communities, learning organizations,
virtual communities) is at the center of the analytical scheme rather than
individual learners in isolation. Similarly, much recent work in computer
science on human-computer interaction (HCI) has focused on tools that support
collaborative work and community-building [3—5; 8; 9]. In such work, the
focus is on the processes of collective action and on computational means to
support it in virtual settings.

The complex interplay between collective learning,
technological support and appropriate theoretical approaches for studying these
issues was the topic of a recent Workshop on Community-based Learning at the
6th International Conference on Learning Sciences (ICLS 2004). One persistent
theme in the workshop was the variety of terms used in these fields to describe
the collections of people (group, community, network, collective) and
components of interaction (culture, identity, collaboration, cooperation) that
were being analyzed and supported.

In this short essay, we describe some of the collective
thinking that emerged in those discussions as we attempted to clarify the
relationships among different kinds of social groups and the interactive
processes that define them. We present these notes not as a comprehensive
literature review or completely elaborated socio-cultural theory, but rather as
a summary of current thinking and an invitation to further discussion of these
issues.

2. SOCIAL CATEGORIZATION AND SOCIAL PERCEPTION

In Mind, Self, and Society, George Herbert Mead [7]
made a famous distinction between me, myself, and I, arguing that
the self that constructs the meaning of events and our understanding of
our place in social systems is composed of a socially-constructed
“me” and the “I” responsible for constructing the world
by self-indicating happenings as salient objects. For Mead, the foundation of
the individual as a social organism is in this dual role of the self as subject
and object, indicator and indicated.

Categorization (in this broad sense of the term) is thus
basic to social experience - indeed, to the human experience. The reflexive
construction of self depends on the identification of “me” as a
certain kind of me, that is, as being similar to or different from others in
some way. “We” understand “ourselves” by dividing the
world into “us” and “them,” into classes of individuals
who are similar or different along a variety of biological, cultural, economic,
and social lines: families, tribes, peoples, races, strata, social classes,
genders, nations, cultures and subcultures.

The nature and formation of these socially-constructed
collectives is central to understanding learning as a social phenomenon, not
least because socio-cultural approaches to learning focus on enculturation and
identity-formation as central mechanisms for learning and development [1; 2; 6;
15; 15]. At the same time, however, in dealing with collective subjects from an
analytical perspective, researchers in learning science and human-computer
interaction tend to refer to collectives in deliberately neutral terms, such as
work groups, organizational units, departments, networks, school classes, or
learning communities. While such generic categories may be analytically useful
in some circumstances, the result is that the literature on collective learning
sometimes appears less than systematic in delineating functional differences
among the central descriptors for the collectives being studied in
collaborative settings. Put another way: the nature and meaning of the
collective itself is central to the processes of socio-cultural learning, but
socio-cultural theories are loose in their use of descriptors for this central
unit of analysis.

This dilemma was one of our central concerns, and much of
our discussion focused on beginning to articulate a more robust framework for
thinking about the nature and properties of the collectives within which (and
upon which) socio-cultural processes operate.

3. FROM GROUP TO COMMUNITY: A FRAMEWORK

3.1. “Group” as Fundamental Social Category

We suggest that the most generic and general social category
is a (social) group, being any collection of more than one person that
shares a common attribute which distinguishes them from other persons. What is
crucial is that a social distinction is made between members of the group and
non-members. That distinction may be embraced by the group or imposed
externally (as when race is legally codified, for example), but in either case
the formation of the group results in a process of social identification
or self-categorization as group members [10; 11]. This social identity is based
on the awareness that one belongs to a group, and represents the cognitive dimension
of social identity; it is also typically associated with an evaluative and an
emotional dimension of group identification. If a group member knows about his
own group membership and if this membership is accompanied by positive/negative
evaluation and emotions, this group membership becomes part of the social
identity of a person.

Whether a person is aware of his or her own group membership
is largely dependent on the social context and situation. According to social
identity theory and social categorization theory [11—13], the
concept of salience describes the conditions influencing the relevance
of in-group/out-group categorizations for self-perception and behavior. To
illustrate this concept of salience, take a heterosexual couple trying to enter
a public swimming pool on “Women Only Day.” In this situation, the
category of sex/gender (the self-categorization of “being
male/female”) becomes salient to the couple, while in other social
situations this differentiation might not be relevant. Thus, a social group
emerges from the interaction of individuals within a context in which the
distinctive attribute of the group makes a difference.

We thus suggest that group is the most fundamental
social category, in the sense that all of the analytical units in the
literature on collective learning—such as teams, social networks, and
communities—are groups. However, we argue that these other terms have
additional structural characteristics that make them distinct subsets of the
generic term group. In the next section of the paper we describe some of
these distinguishing characteristics.

3.2. Within Groups: Teams, Networks, Communities

A team needs a common task. We suggest that a team
or working group (or conceptual derivates such as small group or project
group) are groups with a common task to fulfill. Team members have
self-perception and awareness of team membership that distinguishes the team
from the social outside. Teams also need to have some common understanding of
the work they share, a common (or at least overlapping) definition of goals and
subgoals, and personal commitment to work for these goals. But these shared
understandings, goals, and identities are tied to the task at hand; the shared
understanding of team activities, methods, and tools is locally instrumental to
the accomplishment of a particular task. When the task is fulfilled, the team
disappears. In many cases, of course, teams are composed of members of some
larger community (see below), and thus shared symbols and patterns of
activity may persist as part of that larger community. Stahl (2004, in this
Issue) further suggests that as a practical matter, teams are limited in size
as well.

Social networks are defined by social ties. A group
becomes a network when members are linked by social ties based on social
contact and communication - which in network theory are referred to as knots.
Within network theory, the frequency of communications within knots is taken as
the main indicator for the strength or weakness of social ties. Quality of the communication
is of less relevance, and social network analysis uses counts of
communicative acts between network knots to determine the structure of the
network. We might describe a team, then, as a temporary local network organized
around a particular task.

Communities need shared culture. Unlike social
networks, communities cannot be characterized and analyzed only by the quantity of social contacts between
members. Communities, we suggest, are social networks (and therefore groups)
that are defined by the quality of
their social ties. In particular, communities are networks with a shared culture:
a set of shared norms, conventions, and meanings; a set of common practices and
common symbols that create a shared semantic space.

3.3. Dimensions of Community

In our discussions, we conceptualized these different
characterizations of collections of individuals as part of a two-dimensional
space of social organizations (see Figure
1). In particular, we
distinguished between shared culture and shared interaction, and
suggest that together these dimensions distinguish between collectives such as
group, team, network, and community, as described above. We added an additional
category of experts to the diagram to account for collections of
individuals with a shared culture but little interaction. (Note that the set
boundaries in the figure are illustrative only.)

Figure
1: A conceptual map of the space of collectives; the
set boundaries are illustrative only. Trajectories of development.

Our space of collectives also suggests a clear developmental
trajectory over time. Lave and Wenger’s [6; 2; 3; 14; 15] theory of communities
of practice suggests that learning is a process of enculturation into the
shared practice of the community. This enculturation can be described by a
movement/development of newcomers from peripheral participation in the
community’s practice to more and more central roles in the community. On
the individual’s side the process can be seen as a process of social
identification with the community’s goals, culture, and practice.

From the perspective of the collective, we note that the
community itself develops through the progressive development of that
shared culture. The interactions over time of community members in a continuous
process of negotiation and deliberation establish a common culture and build a
collective identity. The shared culture and shared interactions of communities
take time to develop and establish. The concept of shared history of
learning [14] thus applies both to the individuals in a community and to
the community as a whole.

Put another way, both individuals and collectives show a
developmental history through the space of collectives, moving from loose group
affiliation to increasing identification with, development of, and
participation in shared interactions within a shared culture.

4. DISCUSSION

It comes as no surprise that the concepts of culture,
identity, and history are useful tools in understanding the
nature of collectives such as groups, teams, networks, and
communities. We suggest, however, that there may be some utility in
beginning to map the relationships among such terms more explicitly. The
discussion here is only a small first step in that direction. However, even
this small step suggests that tools to support “collaboration” may
need different affordances for different kinds of collectives. The Web is a
particularly effective tool for supporting networks of people. Supporting
communities, however, will necessarily involve supporting a particular
culture, and thus (by definition) particular kinds of interactions.
Different communities will, therefore, almost certainly require different kinds
of tools—or tools that can be significantly customized for a particular
culture.

Understanding the structural and theoretical differences
between different kinds of collectives has methodological implications as well.
In particular, the analysis above suggests that social network analysis may be
a useful tool to quantitatively analyze social structures; but it may be
insufficient to understand the work of communities, which are marked by shared
culture, and thus where the quality of social interactions matters as much as
the quantity.

More broadly, this analysis suggests that while the practices
are an important component of groups, teams, and communities, what
distinguishes a community is its shared culture. This encompasses
practices, to be sure - and in the end, culture is constituted in and through
practice. But culture plays a prominent role in the space of collectives we
describe above, and thus, we argue, should play a significant role in the
analysis of any community. Community-based learning is, in the end,
culture-based learning, and group learning (whether learning by individuals in
the group or the group as a whole), is, as socio-cultural theorists suggest, a
process of enculturation.

In any event, we hope that this brief discussion of groups,
teams, communities and the similarities and differences among them will lead to
further work on the social entities within which group learning takes place, on
the processes of learning in such settings, and on the technologies that can
support such processes.

5. Author Note

This work was supported in part by a Spencer
Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, and by a
National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award
(REC-0347000). Any opinions, findings, or conclusions expressed in this paper do
not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies or cooperating
institutions.

6. REFERENCES

[1.] Arnold, P. and Smith, J.D. 2003.
Adding connectivity and loosing context with ICT: Contrasting learning
situations from a community of practice perspective. In: M. Huysman, E. Wenger
& V. Wulf (Eds.), Communities and
Technologies – Proceedings of the first international conference on
Communities and Technologies (C&T 2003), Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.

[2.] Brown, J.S. and Duguid, P. 1991.
Organizational learning and Communities of Practice: Towards a unified view of
working, learning, and evaluation. Organization
Science 2(1):40--58.

[3.] Duguid, P. 2003. Incentivizing
practice. Report on communities of practice, knowledge work, innovation,
economic and organizational theory prepared for the Institute for Prospective
Technological Studies of the European Commission, Workshop on “ICTs and
Social Capital in the Knowledge Society”, November 2003, Seville, Spain.

[4.] Huysman, M., E. Wenger and V. Wulf
(Eds.) 2003. Communities and Technologies – Proceedings of the first
international conference on Communities and Technologies (C&T 2003), Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.

[5.] Huysman, M., and V. Wulf (Eds.) 2004.
Social Capital and Information
Technology. Cambridge, MA/London, UK:
MIT Press.

[6.] Lave, J. and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning – Legitimate
peripheral participation. Cambridge,
MA: University Press.

[7.] Mead,
G.H. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

[8.] Preece, J. 2000. Online Communities. Designing Usability,
Supporting Sociability. Chichester,
UK: Wiley.

[9.] Rheingold, H. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homestanding on the
Electronic Frontier. Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley.

[10.] Simon, B. 1999. A place in the
world. Self and social categorization. In: T.R. Tyler, R.M. Kramer, and O.P.
John (Eds.): The psychology of the social
self, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

[11.] Tajfel, H. 1978. Differentiation between social groups.
Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. London, UK:
Academic Press.

[12.] Tajfel, H. 1982. Social identity and intergroup relations.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

[13.] Turner, J.C., Hogg, M.A., Oakes,
P.J., et al. 1987. Rediscovering the
social group. A self-categorization theory, Oxford, UK:
Blackwell.

[14.] Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning,
and Identity. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.

[15.] Wenger, E., McDermott, R., and
Snyder, W.M. 2002. Cultivating
Communities of Practice. A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Boston,
MA: Harvard
Business School
Press.

Re-presenting Collective Learning: A Generative
Way Forward

Lachlan Forsyth and Lynette
Schaverien

University of Technology, Sydney
(UTS), Australia

[email-masked],
[email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

Professional development is increasingly conceived as a
sustained group or community process, often supported by online technologies.
Yet despite the enthusiasm for online communities of practice [40], and the
innovative educational contexts being developed to support them, the reality of
developing and maintaining a critical mass of teacher engagement is proving to
be challenging (for example, the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF) [4]; the Hawaii
Networked Learning Communities (HNLC) [37]). Teacher educators and designers of
technological learning environments continually strive to maximize the value of
teacher engagement in such contexts, yet the conditions under which social
learning and collaboration become an appropriate strategy for teachers remain
unclear [4; 19]. Furthermore, contemporary research from evolutionary psychology
[27] and modeling of cultural transmission [5] suggests the likelihood that
professional development in sustained groups would involve subtle yet
influential social learning
strategies. For example, decisions regarding the adequacy of a particular
concept or professional behavior may be influenced by the status of the group
member advocating it, the frequency of the behavior in the group, or even which
idea or behavior was offered to the group first [1].

(Online) teacher communities seem to offer a potent model
for professional development that aligns with contemporary understanding of
learning as situated, distributed and social [21]. However, there is a need to
test theoretically driven justifications of communities of practice by
undertaking empirical investigations into how learning is actually occurring in
these social and technological contexts [3; 11; 34]. Obviously, the task of
developing strong explanatory frameworks that take us well past simple
descriptions is urgent. The fields of astronomy and molecular biology became
explanatory fields of science only after harnessing powerful theoretical lenses
borrowed from other fields [7]. When such explanatory frameworks were coupled
with advances in technology that expanded the ability to research these fields
empirically, the benefits were exponential. In education, design-based research
[38] and subtle but powerful technological contexts for learning may provide
the strategic means to move forward.

2. BEYOND THE INDIVIDUAL AS A UNIT OF ANALYSIS

Underpinning many of the theoretical perspectives used to
analyse social learning in pre-service and professional development contexts is
the work of Vygotsky. Fundamental to this perspective is the notion that higher
mental processes have their origin within social processes. “Any function
in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes.
First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane.
First it appears between people as an inter-psychological category, and then
within the child as an intra-psychological category” (Vygotsky, cited in
Wertsch [41]). Whilst Vygotsky’s theory has problematised the notion of
learning as an individual process, there is little consensus on how best to
tackle an analysis of learning beyond the individual. Many studies of online
communities, based explicitly on Vygotskian principles, still maintain a unit
of analysis at the level of the individual [2]. This approach may be neglecting
the potential of analyzing learning as
a group, as opposed to learning because of
a group.

Vygotksy’s notion of the ‘collective life’
as a source of individual learning gave theoretical impetus to
‘thinking’, ‘voluntary attention’ and ‘logical
memory’ as group attributes [41]. Vygotsky’s theory of educational
psychology has thus provoked strong interest in notions of distributed
cognition [18]; that is, cognition and learning that transcend the boundaries
of the individual.[2]
Development on Vygotsky’s interpersonal plane has thus been conceived as
a form of collective learning. Insights from his work have been incorporated
into (amongst others) two prominent sets of ideas within educational research:
Wenger’s communities of practice [40] (deriving largely from prior, more
general notions of situated cognition [20]) and Engestrom’s activity
theory [10]. These approaches help us understand learning within the complex
dynamic of a community setting where there is a shared practice or activity
[15]; however, neglect of the ‘small group’ as an important
mediator between the individual and the community is a concern for some [36],
given the key role Vygotsky afforded to small groups [41].

Of particular significance to the present paper is
Vygotsky’s recognition of the need to move beyond a purely sociocultural
understanding of learning – specifically, by asserting the
interdependence of the biological and sociocultural realms in ontogenesis [41].
This may act as a reminder to educational researchers of the need to be open to
possible synergies with contemporary theories in other fields such as biology,
neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Perhaps he was assisting educational
researchers towards a science of education through theoretical models that, at
the very least, recognise the varied realms contributing to any act of
learning. Fletcher asserts such “external coherence” as an
indicator of a good scientific theory [12].

The biologically based generative theory of learning [31;
32] offers just such a perspective for educational research, deriving from
neuroscience [8; 9] and evolutionary psychology [26]. In this view, learning is
conceived as an adaptive behavior that hedges our chances of survival.
“To survive in its eco-niche, an organism must either inherit or create
criteria that enable it to partition the world into perceptual categories
according to its adaptive needs” [8]. According to generative theory this
process is undertaken through iterative cycles in which learners generate and
test ideas based on their value, selecting those ideas that survive these tests
[9; 26; 31; 32]. The value-driven selection that underpins this process
operates through a generate-test-regenerate (g-t-r) heuristic that is
identifiable at three nested levels [26]:

At a
primary level in genes, by natural selection, as genetic knowledge-gaining;

At a
secondary level in organ systems (immune systems and brains), as the
selection of ideas and behavior tested against values that have been
developed by individuals through their life-experience; and,

At a
tertiary level in groups and cultures, again, as the selection of ideas
and behaviors, but tested against communal or cultural values.

Within this generative framework, the heuristic’s
tertiary level proposes a particular understanding of social and collective
learning: the learning of each individual in a group is influenced not only by
their unique pattern of values at the primary and secondary level, but
simultaneously by shared beliefs and values at
the collective level; that is, within the group and culture in which they
are operating. As suggested already, this collective level can, itself, be
analyzed for learning and progression.

By suggesting a mechanism by which learning occurs at each
nested level, this theory bridges the divide between the individual and the
collective. As well, it opens up the possibility of ongoing empirical research
that might well deliver external coherence with contemporary understanding in
the sciences.

The generative theory is already proving its worth for
understanding the learning of individual students and teachers [14; 30; 33] and
in re-conceiving e-learning design [35]. Now, its worth in understanding
collective learning at the tertiary level is being explored [13]. The context
for this research is an Australian project named DESCANT (SciTech)[3]:
a design-based research initiative exploring the worth of an innovative
e-learning strategy for scaling up teacher development in elementary Science
and Technology education within a geographically diffuse education system. In
its first phase, a small number of teachers (11 in all) were supported to
conceive and prototype their own e-learning environment for teacher
professional development in Science and Technology education. Such support was
largely undertaken through sustained online collaboration using both generic
and boutique software. Following the development of the environment, larger
groups of teachers will trial, modify and evaluate the e-learning environment
(see http://www.curriculumsupport.nsw.edu.au/science/ftp/Folder1/scitech/index.htm
for details). With its thorough collaborative research design, DESCANT has
provided a significant opportunity to investigate collective learning.

3. TOWARDS A MODEL OF COLLECTIVE LEARNING

Generative learning suggests a powerful explanatory
framework for collective learning. Now there is an urgent need for an
appropriate model that can leverage insight from empirical data concerning this
educational phenomenon. Due to the inherent complexity of a collective learning
context, this task is always going to be a methodological challenge. In the
DESCANT context, a model of generative learning that was originally developed
for analyzing individual learning in
technology-and-science education [31] was used as a starting point. That model
identifies learning within six acts: exploring, designing, making, operating,
explaining and understanding.[4]
Whilst it is beyond the scope of this paper to explain each of these acts, it
is important to note that the model is synergistic with the
generate-test-regenerate (g-t-r) heuristic.

The generative model was adapted for analyzing learning at
the collective level by conceiving of each of the six acts as a collective or
emergent phenomenon. This has proven extremely useful in providing insights
into the emergence of shared understandings and values in the DESCANT teacher
collective [13]. As further insights emerge regarding learning at this
collective level, there may be a need to expand the model to incorporate a more
explicit representation of such processes as enculturation [5] and the
influence of ‘collective intentionality’ [25]. According to
Plotkin, “collective intentionality” (after the work of John
Searle), may be fundamental in understanding social force, and thus social
learning [25]. Collective intentionality:

“…is not the sum of
individual intentionalities and is not reducible to them…This does not
mean that [it]…hovers in the spaces between people or binds their minds
through mysterious field forces. Each of us has a mind and mental life that are
confined to our individual brains. But to quote Searle, ‘it does not
follow from that that all my mental life must be expressed in the form of a
singular noun phrase referring to me. The form that my collective
intentionality can take is simply “we intend”, “we are doing
so and so”, and the like. In such cases, I intend only as part of our intending. The intentionality that
exists in each individual head has the form ‘we intend’”
[25]. (Emphasis added)

Plotkin’s pragmatism in dealing with collectivity
emphasizes the possibility of addressing the link between the neural structures
of individuals and the regulation of these structures based on social
relationships. This collective regulation in ontogenesis has been described as
‘structural coupling’ [22] and ‘co-emergence’ [39], and
has been used as the basis for understanding distributed cognition in an
educational context [6]. While such perspectives may be of great value in
developing a suitable model for empirically analyzing collective learning, the
methodological dilemmas remain. For example, what counts as evidence of
collective learning and how do we collect data about such emergent phenomena?
Furthermore, how do we collect data on a process as subtle and implicit as
enculturation: a phenomenon that may be fundamental to understanding how
cultural values and shared understandings progress within a population? Yet
perhaps in this regard we are in a more fortunate position than Vygotsky was
decades ago.

4. A TECHNOLOGY FOR UNDERSTANDING COLLECTIVITY

Within the physical sciences, the advent of new technologies
has always played a significant role in the advancement of understanding by
allowing humans to engage empirically with what was previously unreachable [7].
Papert’s vision of technologically rich environments as supplying
‘objects-to-think-with’ made a similar vision explicit for
education [24]. In educational research, the explicit nature of communication
over the Internet has proven valuable for studying many facets of social
learning and community design. Nevertheless, within such online contexts,
emergent phenomena such as collective learning remain implicit: something for
researchers to carve out of the complex context based on their models or
theoretical approaches. However, technologies that seek to capture this
collective level are now under development. For example, in classrooms,
Knowledge Forum software encourages explicit representation of learning within
knowledge building communities [15; 29]. Within a professional development
context, Lessonlab technology is affording teachers a cumulative knowledge base
that incorporates a dynamic mechanism for verification and improvement [16].

In DESCANT, teachers have identified both the need for an
e-learning environment that makes explicit the progression of learning at a
collective level and some ways this might be operationalized. This environment
is currently under development and will be trialed, as the final phase of the
DESCANT project, with a new cohort of teachers early in 2005. For professional
development, such an environment may well supply an ‘object to think
with’ [24] by making learning at the collective (or even cultural) level
more tangible. Furthermore, with this collective realm of learning made
increasingly visible and explicit, researchers may be afforded new
opportunities to probe more deeply into what now seem to be mysteries of social
learning, just as their counterparts in the physical sciences have done so
successfully when afforded appropriate technologies.

5. REFERENCES

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[4.] Barab, S., Mackinster, J., and
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Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. London, UK:
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[10.] Engestrom, Y. 1990. Learning, Working and Imagining: Twelve
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[14.] Hall, R., and Schaverien, L.
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[24.] Papert, S. 1980. Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful
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Part I - A Theory of Learning. International
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Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.

Can we use a Complex Systems Framework
to Model Community-Based Learning?

Elizabeth Charles

Learning by Design™ Lab, College of Computing,

Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

[email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

The classroom is bustling with activity and Miss Lawson
calls out, “five more minutes.” Scattered throughout the room are
groups of four and five students crowded around each of the five low-standing
circular work desks. A palpable buzz of enthusiasm fills the air as these
groups deliberate amongst themselves before hurriedly filling in the large
sheets of poster paper sitting on their work desks.

Felicity, Tara, Halia,
Scott and Brad, referred to as group “3-3” by their classmates, are
located in the middle of room. Tara sits
propped on one leg, stretching across the table, eyes trained on the
2’x3’ piece of paper with the heading, “How does the length
of straw affect the performance of the car?” Felicity and Scott, huddled
at the other end of the round table, are working at a frenetic pace to meet the
deadline. They switch back and forth between the colored markers, weaving in
and out in a seemingly choreographed rhythm while avoiding bumping into each
other as they both draw and write on the poster. Meanwhile, Brad and Halia
stand over their shoulders, at the ready to attend to any calls for help or
information. Felicity calls out, “What were the times for the 18cm
straw?” Halia, leafs through the notes and replies, “for trial one
it was 3.6 meters, trial two, 4.9, trial three, 4.2.” Then, turning it
over to the soft-spoken Brad, who in a coordinated effort was simultaneously
entering the numbers on his calculator, “The average is 4.2m and the
velocity is .31 meters per second.”

There is a constant flow of dialog between the five. Raising
her head up from drawing the “motion story board,” Felicity, in a
reflective tone, tries to get the group’s attention,
“shouldn’t the net force arrow go the other way?” Her first
attempt goes unattended, and she tries again, this time shifting to a kneeling
pose, “dudes, I think the arrows go the other way!” Scott stops
what he is doing, turns, and for a few seconds the two recreate the motion of
the car through their gestures. “If the car’s moving in this
direction” gesturing to the left, “then the net force is also in
that direction” gesturing to the left. Tara
chimes in “I agree with Felicity, when the car is coasting, the net force
is in the opposite direction” motioning to the right, while Halia nods in
support. The conversation continues for a few more turns and then Felicity
concludes by repeating their agreement, “good! When the car’s
coasting there is only friction force, [and] the arrow goes this way”
once again gesturing the direction as she speaks.

Working on what appears to be a slightly different track,
Brad, from time to time, turns and scans the wall closest to him. This wall,
like all the other available walls of the classroom, is covered with
presentation posters from this and other classes taught by Miss Lawson. Without
an exchange of words, Brad moves to the other side of the room and checks out
more posters. This apparent unilateral action receives the full endorsement of
the group who all turn when he states “Yeah, group 4-2 also tested straw
length and their results are the same.” Felicity and Scott flash a quick “I
told you so” smile and return to writing in the last required component
of the poster – the “rule of thumb” supported by evidence.
Miss Lawson calls out the final “Time’s up!” and the sound of
feet scurrying and tables moving into position is heard as students plop into their
chairs. Class period 3 is now ready for their poster presentations! It is
finally time for group 3-3 to share the fruits of their labor and engage in
this now familiar whole-class activity of presenting what they learned from
their experimentation. They are also ready to learn from their
classmates’ poster presentations in this collaborative environment.

2. BACKGROUND

Over ten years ago, scholars such as Brown and Campione
proposed a re-conceptualization of the traditional classroom in order to enhance
the possibilities of learning in real world settings [5]. The central aspect of
the learning environment was to support learning by providing a rich domain of
knowledge, structure activities to use this new knowledge within that domain,
guide learning by instruction and modeling of thinking and reflection, and
deliberately setting aside considerable time for students to engage in
explaining processes to themself and others [6]. Their approach to engineering
the classroom was referred to as Foster Communities of Learners (FCL). A more
generic use of this metaphor may be identified as learning communities, which describes other collaborative, inquiry
and project-based learning environments, united by social theory (e.g.,
Vygotsky’s zone of proximal
development; Wenger’s communities
of practice) [19; 20]. Examples of these types of classroom and curriculum
projects are found at the institutional research level (e.g., Knowledge-Building Communities at OSIE
[18]), curricula level (e.g., Learning by Design™ physical science and
earth science units [14]) and project level (e.g., science curriculum project
[7]).

The success of these instances, as illustrated by the
scenario above, demonstrates the importance and potential of
multi-voiced/minded construction of knowledge (i.e., shared/social aspect of
negotiation of meaning) while engaged in authentic activities. Some have begun
to look at the various components of these engineered classrooms and what makes
them successful [7; 16]. One thing is clear: we still do not fully understand
how to tease apart the complexity of these learning environments to study the
interactions of the social and cognitive components while still being sensitive
to their emergent qualities. In short, how do complex dynamic systems made up of
multiple agents and socio-cognitive/cultural affordances co-develop and change
(i.e., learn) over time? And, from a theoretical perspective, how do we begin
to construct models of this cognitive development, which accounts for
individual (student) and collective (workgroup, and whole class) reasoning and
learning, without taking a reductive approach?

In order to explore ways of understanding these settings and
addressing the concerns listed above, I propose adapting a dynamic systems
approach, which combines complex adaptive systems theory (CAS) with two other
characteristics (timescales and history) of complex systems [3; 10]. The
intention of this paper, therefore, is to merely introduce this idea and
demonstrate how it may be used to understand the scenario described above (a
Learning by Design™ [LBD] classroom). I begin with a brief rationale and
overview to situate the reader, and conclude with an outline of the proposed
dynamic systems analytical model and its possible strengths.

3. UNDERSTANDING LEARNING IN CLASSROOMS

Increasingly, learning is viewed as the outcome of socially
negotiated activity, situated in potentially rich environments, within complex
communities of sometimes unequal participants [9; 15; 17]. Furthermore, from
the distributed cognition school of thought, we are asked to extend the
definition of cognition from individual learner to include the small group, or
class as learner. Hutchins proposes: “a social group is a cognitive
system that may have cognitive properties very different from those of the individuals
who constitute the group” [13]. Although his research describes the
cognitive practices of “well-oiled” teams, it is arguable that it
also applies to the communities of learners we observe in constructivist
classrooms.

One possible approach to understanding these dense and
layered learning environments is to employ the analytical framework of Activity
Theory, a cultural-historical theory of activity presented by Lev Vygotsky and
his colleagues [8]. It suggests that cultural means, tools and signs mediate
interactions between the human agent(s) and objects in the environment. Barab,
Evans & Eun-Ok Baek provide an excellent example of its use as a lens
through which they come to understand the design and participation activity of
an online community [2]. Although Activity Theory is a powerful tool for
explaining the interactions of socio-cognitive/cultural systems, I propose it
is nonetheless worthwhile to explore the explanatory potential of other models
such as the adapted dynamic systems model.

Advocating the use of systems models to explain social
organization and learning is not a novel idea. Boyd argues for the use of
elements of cybernetic theory – “cybersystemics” – to
describe classrooms and other social systems [4; personal communications]. Barab,
Cherkes-Julkowski, Swenson, et al., propose an autocatakinetic systems approach, which suggests that learning
would be understood best as a “participatory process involving
contextualized practice and meaning as part of an ecological system” [1].
More directly, Hurford proposes using Holland’s
Complex Adaptive Systems theory (CAS) as a model of individual student learning
[10; 11]. He provides an excellent account of how Holland’s CAS “mechanisms”
can be applied to explain human learning. My use of this theory differs from
Hurford’s in two ways. Firstly, I am interested in describing the
interactions between the three levels of learning – individual,
workgroup, and class; secondly, I am particularly interested in exploring the
role of what Holland
refers to as a “property” of CAS, namely “Flows” [10].

4. ADAPTING HOLLAND’S
MODEL OF COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS

A complex system is a hierarchically organized collection of
a large number of coupled components defined by stated boundaries. The smallest
unit of the system is referred to as an individual “agent”
operating under specified rules resulting in a higher level of organization,
which exhibits emergent properties.
Put simply, emergence is a phenomenon wherein the interaction of a
system’s parts (agents) results in a higher order of organization
(meta-agent or system) causing the system to behave differently from what one
could predict from knowledge of the parts alone, and which takes on a different
set of operational instructions. According to Holland, complex adaptive systems
(CAS) exhibit certain “properties” (Aggregation, Nonlinearity,
Flows, and Diversity) and “mechanisms” (Tagging, Internal Models
and Building Blocks), which contribute to the process of emergence characterized
by the unique, amplifying (sometimes dampening), nonlinear behaviors of these
systems [10].

Expanding on this description, a system’s emergent
properties can be viewed as patterns or recurring structures resulting from
nonlinear interactions of lower level parts (agents), that are governed by
specific rules and relationships. These rules and relationships are the
mechanisms that afford emergence, which is the resultant state of coupling all
the lesser processes of aggregation/self-organization, nonlinearity/stochastic
behaviors, tagging/selection, and flows of resources. Furthermore,
tagging/selection mechanisms regulated through flows of resources allow for
adaptation of the system. These powerful combinations are all affected by the
“history” of the system, and unfold over varying
“timescales.”

For this paper, I will examine only how the component “Flows”
can be useful in helping us understand learning communities.
“Flows” describes the process that allows the system’s
resources to be distributed. It may in fact be the glue that holds the system
together. By carefully observing flows within a system we can identify all the
relevant nodes (individuals, groups, artifacts, or environmental components)
and their connectors (designate possible interactions). Additionally, if we
study a system for an extended period, flows also allows us to identify the
changing connectors (their appearance, disappearance), which in turn helps to
explain why agents adapt or fail to adapt, as well as the
development/adaptation of the system as a whole. “Thus neither the flows
nor the networks are fixed in time. They are patterns that reflect changing
adaptations as time elapses and experience accumulates.” [10]

5. ILLUSTRATION

To illustrate my point, I will use the CAS characteristic of
Flows to interpret the classroom scenario described above. It is by no means
intended to represent a fully elaborated analysis using the CAS model, but
instead provide a flavor of what can be understood about individual and group
cognition using this single component.

To start, we identify the system as the classroom, with the
workgroups and individuals as meta-agents and agents, respectively. We then
identify “information and knowledge” as the major resource within
the system. The obvious “agent/nodes” are Miss Lawson and the five
students. And, the easily identified “connectors” are the verbal
communications (Ms. Lawson’s announcement - “five more
minutes”; Felicity’s request for information -“what were the
times...?”; Halia’s reply - “for trial one it was...”).
For the moment, if we look exclusively at this level of interaction we can
identify connectors between the teacher and the group, Felicity and Scot, and
the onlookers Tara, Halia, and Brad (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Initial
observed interactions from the scenario described.

Studying the scenario more closely we recognize that the
presentation poster (2’x3’ paper and written contents) and
classroom walls (poster archives) as other nodes within the system. In fact,
these nodes are very significant because they contain the history of the system
and the workgroups. In addition to these nodes, we also recognize a larger
number of connectors within the system, such as the kinesthetic actions of the
students (Felicity and Scot gesturing the direction of the force diagrams; Brad
running to the poster wall), which also allow the flow of information within
the system.

From this perspective, the limited initial set of
interactions becomes a large network of possible interactions (see Figure 2).
This lens allows us to view Felicity as a significant agent/node, whose
question (“shouldn’t the arrow...?”) plays a central role in
connecting other agent/nodes and artifact/nodes. Her initial question, which
results from the flow of information within the connector between her and the
poster, is amplified by subsequent flows of information within the connectors
between her and the agent/node Scot; as well as flows of other coordinated
activity (verbal utterances and gestures) within the connectors. It also calls
the attention of the other members of the group, demonstrated by Tara who
chimes in, “I agree with Felicity”, and Halia, who nods in
agreement.

Figure 2: Closer
observation of interactions from the scenario described.

What does this tell us? On the level of the individual it is
reasonable to suggest that Felicity and Scot, who are directly interacting with
a major node/artifact (presentation poster), are most likely actively
constructing knowledge. On the level of the workgroup, this CAS lens helps to
explain the role of the presentation poster as a contributor to the
group’s cognitive development. It does this by allowing us to view the
other agent/nodes, who at first appear to be merely onlookers to this
multi-modal exchange, as collaborators through their agreement (verbal and nonverbal).
Although Tara, Halia and Brad do not appear to be directly engaged, the
connectors between them and the temporary “cluster” node (Felicity
and Scot) become more evident as the scenario progresses. And, although
Brad’s interaction (connector) with the wall/node (seeking missing
information) does not relate to the discussion of the cluster node (Felicity
and Scot’s conversation), it does demonstrate that he is attending to the
poster/node. Hence, possibly explaining why his individual cognitive development
may be different from members of his workgroup.

6. CONCLUSION

This sample application using the lens of CAS Flows allows
us to see some of the value of this model. It can account for the individual as
well as the group because it focuses on the interactions rather than on any of
the two organizational levels. It also accounts for the history component of
complex systems (although this point is not developed). I argue that it allows
us to explain the “shared enterprise” in such a way as to describe
collective learning in a non-reductive manner.

This is important because we need a dynamic and inclusive
model, which allows us to account for the multiple agents (student, teacher,
workgroup, artifact, environment) and the product of their interactions, which
may be collective artifacts, or collective knowledge. Complex dynamic systems
theory provides us with such a tool, and allows us to construct models of these
systems so that we may better understand them and predict the impact of changes
within them, such as their adaptations, how certain features are selected, and
the importance of history and timescales in the development and evolution of
the learning communities.

7. REFERENCES

[1.] Barab, S.A.,
Cherkes-Julkowski, M., Swenson, R., et al. 1999. Principles of
self-organization: Learning as participation in autocatakinetic systems. The Journal of the Learning Sciences
8(3-4):349--390.

[2.] Barab, S. A., Evans, M., and Baek,
E. 2003. Activity theory as a lens for charactering the participatory unit. In:
D. Jonassen (Ed.). International Handbook on Communication Technologies
V2 (pp. 199--214). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.

[3.] Bar-Yam. 1997. Dynamics of complex
systems. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

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[5.] Brown, A.L., and Campione, J.C.
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[6.] Campione, J.C., Shapiro, A.M., and
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[7.] Crawford, B.A., Krajcik, J.S., and
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[12] Hutchins, E. 1995. Cognition
in the Wild. Cambridge,
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[13.] Hutchins, E. (in preparation).
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[14.] Kolodner, J.L., Crismond, D.,
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[15.] Lemke, J.L. 2001. Articulating
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[20.] Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning,
and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.

Pedagogical Praxis: Using Technology
to Build Professional Communities of Practice

David Williamson Shaffer

University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Educational Psychology, Academic Advanced
Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory, Madison,
WI.

[email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade and a half, work in the field of
education on communities of practice [20] and/or communities of
learners [2] has focused on how individual development takes place within
the larger context of the norms and activities of a community. Recognizing
this, educators working within the sociocultural tradition have focused on
documenting the practices of extant communities [12; 18--20; 35] and/or on ways
in which the “community of practice” of the classroom can be
improved [2; 25]. Broadly speaking, this work looks at how the traditional intellectual
disciplines (such as math, science, and history) are mobilized in the context
of real-world practices, or how importing more authentic practices into school
settings can develop disciplinary understanding more effectively.

One problem with such approaches is that the traditional
disciplines focus on knowledge rather than action. The ivory tower is
deliberately isolated from the day-to-day problems of life in the world [7].
Mathematicians, historians, and research scientists clearly form communities of
practice. It is less clear, however, that their authentic practices are the
most useful models for the majority of students—or that the disciplines
they practice are the most important ends in a post-industrial society.

In this short paper, I describe pedagogical praxis
[33] as a fundamentally different approach to thinking about communities of
practice in educational settings. Pedagogical praxis focuses on the development
of useful and socially valued ways of thinking through personally and socially
meaningful activity. That is, pedagogical praxis links learning and doing
within the framework of communities of practice, but it does so by reframing
two fundamental premises of much recent work. First, pedagogical praxis
suggests that professional practices such as medicine, law, architecture, and
journalism have distinct and coherent epistemic frames [32] analogous to
the “ways of thinking” usually attributed to the traditional
disciplines. These epistemic frames, rather than the traditional disciplines,
are taken as the educational goal. Second, pedagogical praxis suggests that by
engaging in epistemically faithful adaptations of the reproductive practices of
professional communities, students can gain access to these ways of
knowing—and thus, to ways of thinking that are fundamentally grounded in
the meaningful activities of a post-industrial society.

2. PEDAGOGICAL PRAXIS

New technologies make it possible for young people to
participate more directly in the world of adult activities, whether using software
tools to develop new mathematical proofs [21], participating in the collection
and analysis of real scientific data [6], or publishing work on the Internet.
Thus, new technologies make it easier for students to learn about the world by
participating in meaningful activity. This idea is not new; rather, it explains
one way that new technologies support Dewey's vision of bringing the
“life of the child” into an environment for learning [3].

Dewey argued that knowing and doing are tightly coupled, and
thus learning needs to take place in the context of activity [3; 22]. Moreover,
as Dewey suggested in Art as Experience,
learning involves meeting and overcoming obstacles in the process of trying to
accomplish a meaningful goal. “Resistance and check,” he wrote,
“bring about the conversion of direct forward action into re-flection [sic]”
[4]. Schon argues that professionals enact this link between knowing and doing
through a process of reflection-in-action: literally, “a capacity to
combine reflection and action, on the spot... to examine understandings and
appreciations while the train is running” [26]. Schon's work suggests
that professionals learn to think in action, and that they learn to do so through their professional experiences.
Reflective practice involves taking action and then reflecting on the results
with peers and mentors.

As Vygotsky and other theorists have suggested, this
reflective process is progressively internalized: the norms, habits,
expectations, abilities, and understandings of a community of
practice—the ways of thinking and acting of the community—become
part of the identity of the individual [8; 19; 20; 36--39]. Lave and Wegner
describe a community of practice as a group of individuals who share a
repertoire of knowledge about and ways of addressing similar (often shared)
problems and purposes. In the process of participating in the learning
practices of such communities, individuals develop ways of thinking and reframe
their identities and interests in relation to the community [20]. For example,
journalists share common ways of thinking and working, and individuals who work
in the field of journalism incorporate these ways of thinking and working into
their sense of self, coming to think of themselves, at least in part, as
journalists.

Different communities of practice (for example, different
professions) have different epistemologies: different ways of knowing, of
deciding what is worth knowing, and of adding to the collective body of
knowledge and understanding. I have described these different epistemologies in
more detail elsewhere as epistemic frames: the grammar of a culture of practice
that binds practice, identity, interest, and understanding with a coherent
epistemology [32]. In the context of professional activities, these ways of
knowing are constituted in practice, and the processes of professional training
are designed to link praxis and epistemology through pedagogical activity.
Pedagogical praxis thus takes a learning practices perspective [12; 28],
using the ways in which professionals are trained as a model for learning
environments. This is in contrast to approaches that develop learning
environments based on the activity structures of experts in professional
practice in real world contexts [3; 11; 13; 17; 19; 20].

3. DESIGN OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The challenges in educational design from the perspective of
professional learning practices are three-fold. First, one must uncover the
structure of learning practices as they are currently constituted: the
relationships among activity, pedagogy, and epistemology that different
learning practices embody. Second, one has to map the relationships between the
epistemologies of practice and the kinds of understanding (cognitive, social,
moral, and practical) that we want young people to develop in the course of
their education. And third, we have to develop techniques for adapting extant
learning practices to create environments that are true both to the ways of
knowing of those practices and to the central skills, habits, and understandings
that young people need to incorporate given their developmental trajectory.
That is, we need to know how professional learning practices work, how they
relate to what young people need to learn, and how to use technology to bring
those practices within young people’s grasp.

Environments that develop constructive skills, habits, and
associations function as coherent systems [2; 23; 31]. Any successful
implementation of a context for learning depends on a clear articulation not
only of “surface procedures,” but also of the underlying
“principles of learning” [2]. One approach to creating such
coherence, explored by many designers of thoughtfully innovative learning
environments, is to articulate a set of principles that will guide the design
of activities and assessments [1; 2; 5; 9; 10; 13--17; 24; 25]. A challenge in
this approach is that the number of principles and practical constraints
multiplies quickly. Designing an environment that is practical and
simultaneously addresses a complex system of requirements can be daunting.

Pedagogical praxis takes a different approach. Because
professional learning practices have evolved into coherent systems over time,
pedagogical praxis suggests that professions such as accounting, architecture,
mediation, engineering, journalism, law, and medicine can provide particularly
powerful models for developing technology-based learning environments in which
young people can learn important skills, habits, and associations [29; 31]. The
model of pedagogical praxis is to uncover the principles embedded in existing
learning practices (a problem of cognitive anthropology and interpretive
ethnography), develop technologies to help students participate in these
practices (a problem of engineering and technology development), and then
create experimental learning environments designed to develop life skills
through participation in a community of practice (a problem of program design
and action research).

That is, rather than looking to professional practices to
find principles that can be used to design classroom activities to teach math,
science, or history, pedagogical praxis seeks to create environments that are thickly
authentic. Resnick and I [34] have argued that authenticity is an alignment
between activities and some combination of (a) goals that matter to the
community outside of the classroom, (b) goals that are personally meaningful to
the student, (c) ways of thinking within an established domain, and (d) the
means of assessment. Thickly authentic learning environments create all of
these alignments simultaneously—for example, in the case of pedagogical
praxis, when personally meaningful projects are produced and assessed according
to the epistemological and procedural norms of an external community of practice.

In this vision, new technology reinvigorates Dewey's idea of
learning important life skills through active engagement in meaningful activity
[3]. Young people learn by working as “practicing” professionals
[26; 27; 29--31]. Pedagogical praxis focuses on communities (or cultures) of
practice not as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves: to help young
people incorporate into their identity development a variety of ways of
thinking that are used to shape the world in which they live.

The implications of pedagogical praxis are thus quite
profound. They suggest that the ways in which professionals acquire their
practices may provide an alternative model for organizing our educational
system. Thickly authentic adaptations of professional learning practices make
it possible for students to learn through participation in valued reflective
practices, and thus give educators an opportunity to move beyond disciplines
derived from medieval scholarship constituted within schools developed in the
industrial revolution—a new model of learning for an era of dramatic
social and economic transformation brought about by new technology.

4. REFERENCES

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[9.] Goldenberg, E.P. 1996.
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[12.] Hall, R., and Stevens, R. 1996.
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[13.] Hmelo, C.E., Holton, D.L., and
Kolodner, J.L. 2000. Designing to Learn about Complex Systems. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(3):
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Making Dynamic Modeling Accessible to Pre-college Science Students. Interactive Learning Environments, 4(3):
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[15.] Jacobson, C., and Lehrer, R.
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Education, 31(1): 71--88.

[16.] Kafai, Y. 1996. Learning a design
by making games: Children’s development of design strategies in the
creation of a complex computational artifact. In: Y. Kafai and M. Resnick
(Eds.), Constructionism in Practice:
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[17.] Kolodner, J.L., Crismond, D.,
Gray, J., et al. 1998. Learning by design from theory to practice. In.: A.S.
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[18.] Lave, J. 1998. Cognition in
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[19.] Lave, J. 1991. Situating Learning in Communities of
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[20.] Lave, J., and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
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[21.] Lichtfield, D., Goldenheim, D.,
and Dietrich, C.H. 1997. Euclid,
Fibonacci, and Sketchpad. The Mathematics
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[22.] Menand, L. 2001. The Metaphysical Club (1st
ed.). New York, NY: Farrar Straus &Giroux.

[23.] Papert, S. 1980. Mindstorms:
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[24.] Resnick, M. 1994. Turtles,
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[25.] Scardamalia, M., and Bereiter, C.
1996. Engaging Students in a Knowledge Society. Educational Leadership, 54(3): 6--10.

[26.] Schon, D.A. 1985. The Design
Studio: An Exploration of its Traditions and Potentials. London, UK:
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[27.] Schon, D.A. 1987. Educating the
Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the
Professions, San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

[28.] Schwartz, J., and Sherin, B.
2002. Describing science content: Bridging the gap between content and process.
In: P. Bell, R. Stevens, and T. Satwicz (Eds.), Keeping Learning Complex: Proceedings of the 5th
International Conference of the Learning Sciences. Mahwah,
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Erlbaum Associates, 421--428.

[29.] Shaffer, D.W. 1998. Expressive Mathematics: Learning by Design. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation. Cambridge,
MA: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

[30.] Shaffer, D.W. 2000. This is
Dewey’s vision revisited. In: D.T. Gordon (Ed.), The Digital classroom: How Technology is Changing the way we Teach and
Learn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Letter, 176--178.

[31.] Shaffer, D.W. 2002. Design,
collaboration, and computation: The design studio as a model for computer
supported collaboration in mathematics. In: T. Koschmann, R. Hall, and N.
Miyake (Eds.), Computer Support for
Collaborative Learning 2. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence
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[32.] Shaffer, D.W. 2004. Epistemic Frames and Islands
of Expertise: Learning from Infusion Experiences. Paper presented at the
International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), Santa Monica, CA.

[33.] Shaffer, D.W. 2004. Pedagogical
Praxis: The Professions as Models for Post-industrial Education. Teachers College Record, 106(7):1401--1402.

[34.] Shaffer, D.W., and Resnick, M.
1999. Thick Authenticity: New Media and Authentic Learning. Journal of Interactive Learning Research¸
10(2): 195--215.

[35.] Stevens, R.R. 2000. Divisions of
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[36.] Vygotsky, L.S. 1934. Thought and Language (A. Kozulin,
Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[37.] Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in Society. Cambridge,
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[38.] Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning,
and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
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[39.] Wertsch, J. V. 1998. Mind as Action. New
York, NY: Oxford University
Press.

Part II. Empirical Findings

Co-Reflection in Online Learning
Environments

Joyce Yukawa

University of Hawai‘i, USA

[email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

While peer collaboration is the basis for co-learning in
many groups, in the classroom the prevailing assumption is that teachers
facilitate student learning, through course structure, setting learning tasks
and outcomes, presentation, discussion, facilitating small group learning,
coaching, and mentoring, among others. Though instructional design models have recognized
that learning builds on interactions between learners and their environments
(teachers have moved from “sage on the stage” to “guide on
the side”), these models tend to focus on individual student learning
rather than group learning.

Educational contexts are, by nature, group learning
environments. Through the mediation of language, students and teachers acquire new understandings when individuals transform
their structures of meaning in response to knowledge frameworks and the meaning
structures of other individuals. Pedagogy truer to a social constructivist view
of learning would shift the locus of learning toward the group to account for
these processes of transformation, which according to Vygotsky are based on an
internalization of social experiences that is built on higher mental functions,
cultural development, and self-regulation [14]. Gerry Stahl in “Mediation
and Group Cognition” proposes that these processes can best be seen
operating in small groups as group cognition, with individual cognition
emerging as a secondary effect [12]. In this view, group cognition is both the
process and product of interpersonal interaction mediated by language.

I propose that reflection — done individually and
collaboratively — is a core activity of group cognition. Using higher
mental functions (e.g., metacognition) and self-regulation, individuals
perceive, respond to, and integrate new knowledge gained as a result of their
relations with others [1]. When learners co-reflect, their understandings are
deepened, broadened, and intensified. In online learning environments, the
products of cognition — thoughts — as they exist in discourse are
embodied in the records captured by the computer. In this paper, I investigate
the nature of reflection and co-reflection through data derived from an online
action research course I recently facilitated.

2. ONLINE ACTION RESEARCH COURSE

In the spring of 2004, I facilitated an online course for
learning about action research with two graduate students working toward a
school library media specialist certification in the University of Hawai‘i
Library and Information Sciences Program. Both Ruth and Sarah (pseudonyms) not
only studied action research but also applied it to their tele-mentoring of two
high school students, undertaken simultaneously with the course. Using data
derived from email messages, chat transcripts, server logs, participant-created
web pages, journals, interviews, and observations during our few face-to-face
meetings, I examined how the co-construction of knowledge occurs and how it
contributes to an understanding of action research.

The course used the simplest online software available
(wiki-style collaborative software), implemented by a learning facilitator who
believes in the importance of “social capital.” I based the course
design on these ideas:

Learning
is a whole-person activity involving cognitive, affective, and social
dimensions [1; 4; 14; 15].

Knowledge
is socially constructed [5; 14].

Relationship
building based on respect, trust, and sincerity is as fundamental to
online learning environments as it is to face-to-face environments [9;
16].

“Social
capital” is basic to learning success and should drive the
development of the computer software [2; 10].

Empowerment
is an important goal of learning [7; 8].

In discussing their own philosophies as teachers, the
students revealed that they generally shared these ideas. Though we had taught
at different levels (elementary, high school, and adult education), we aimed at
empowering our students through constructivist teaching, accommodating
different learning styles, and building relationships with and among our
students. We also shared the service orientation of librarianship. Our
relationship building during the course was facilitated by a shared professional
culture as teachers and librarians.

I chose the text-based wiki software because I believed
that: (1) students who create their own web pages as an integral part of the
learning process are more likely to reflect and to sustain their motivation for
learning in the virtual environment; (2) the products of the learning process
should remain as a source of individual and community memory for shared
learning and further reflection; (3) it is important for instructors to have
the flexibility to adapt the website to evolving learner needs; and (4) the
flexibility of the software can encourage participants to adapt their learning
and communication strategies and patterns to the online environment.

The students and I interacted primarily via email and weekly
chats. The students also used the software for module assignments, journal
entries, brainstorming, writing drafts, bibliographies, and progress charts. I
used the software to structure the course; to post assignments, student work
samples and course readings; to link to external resources; and to create chat
summaries, among others.

3. ONLINE “VISIBILITY”

Visibility of thoughts, feelings, and actions is the basic
element upon which mutual understanding, social bonding, and group cognition
are built. Despite our shared professional culture, significant differences
affected our visibility to each other and our learning interactions. These
included learning style preference, attitude toward technology, and the
existence of a prior relationship.

Ruth, an elementary school teacher, stated that she was a
visual learner who often uses graphic representations and conceptual mapping to
take notes and to work out her ideas. With the exception of simple tables, the
wiki software does not support graphic representations. Not surprisingly, this
text-based medium inhibited her ability to express herself. She also noted that
she was cautious in her online communication, as she felt it was prone to
misinterpretation without the nonverbal cues and immediate feedback available
in face-to-face interaction. Her email messages were generally brief and
business-like. She had previously taken an online course that made her
uncomfortable with online communication, particularly chat. At the end of the
course, she ranked our few face-to-face interactions as more important than
email or chat for her learning progress (though less important than journaling,
as I discuss in the next section). Because she and I had not developed a
relationship prior to the course, this signified to me the importance of
including face-to-face interactions in an online course, where possible.

Sarah was a high school English teacher adept and at ease
with writing. She had not previously taken an online course, although she had
experienced hybrid courses in which online communication was used to support
face-to-face interaction. The text-based medium, both synchronous and
asynchronous, supported her ability to express herself. She openly expressed
her thoughts and feelings, even uncertainties and anxieties, often thinking
“out loud” as she wrote. Her frequently long emails were written in
a conversational style. She and I had established a relationship in an earlier
class. At the end of the course, she stated that, although she had gotten to
know me far better during the course, she felt that she was able to express
herself more freely because a relationship of trust had already been
established.

4. REFLECTION AND CO-REFLECTION AS GROUP COGNITION

What emerged as the critical indicator of individual and
group cognition was the use of reflection skills. Action research requires
reflective inquiry toward the goal of improved practice. The key aspects of
reflection identified in the students’ discourse were: (1) being aware;
(2) returning to experience; (3) attending to feelings; (4) probing experience;
(5) evaluating experience; (6) making a leap of thinking; and (7) integrating
new understanding. These features are supported by the work on reflective
inquiry and reflective practice done by Dewey, Schon, and Boud et al. [3; 6;
11].

I propose that the reflective self can take two stances in
the processes of group cognition, depending on level of interaction. Regardless
of level, the reflective self operates according to Vygotsky’s assumption
that “human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process
by which [individuals] grow into the intellectual life around them” [13].
Immersion in intellectual life involves interaction with the thoughts,
feelings, and experiences of others who may or may not be co-present in the
learning group.

In the first stance, the reflective self engages in inquiry
without seeking feedback. Interaction in this case is subtle. It begins with a
response to others who are brought to mind through reading, memories of
previous interactions, or vicarious experience. The products of this reflective
process can make a valuable contribution to group cognition in online learning
environments when records of thoughts, feelings, and actions remain visible to
co-learners as potential sources of further reflection.

The second stance — co-reflection — is more
overtly interactional. I define co-reflection as a collaboratively undertaken
reflective process. Based on the concept of dialogic inquiry developed by
Gordon Wells, I use the term to indicate an inquiry process at a higher level
of intellectual and emotional maturity than the K-12 educational context used
by Wells [15]. The nature of co-reflection is that participants build knowledge
together through discourse, bringing in their experiences and the use of
relevant information to achieve understanding of a topic, issue, or problem of
interest. They engage in collaborative learning — meaning-making with
others — in order to extend and transform their understanding through a
jointly undertaken activity. Co-reflection is fostered in relationships based
on respect, trust, concern, and sincerity.

Ruth exemplified the first stance and in fact used the
course to develop her reflection skills. In her journals, she described a
greater awareness of her perceptions, values, and teaching practices that was
powerful and empowering. The emergence of a more deeply reflective self seemed
to have been triggered by the course content and early focus. In an early
journal entry, she notes that the course readings “heightened my
awareness of the littlest things, and seemingly meaningless events have
magically transformed themselves into deep connections … Taking a closer
look at one’s own practice allows one to not only examine how one
teaches, but more importantly why particular actions were taken, what actions
could have been taken, and places the focus on actions that can be controlled,
your very own … It also entails coming to a deeper grasp of the
questions: Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I believe in? Why did I make
the choices that I did?” In her research project for the course, she
investigated her own learning style through her online interactions with me and
with the high school student she was mentoring. In the process, her view of
herself as a teacher was transformed. In her final paper, she stated, “I
am empowered by the desire to discover more and learn more about how I go about
interpreting the world around me.” At the end of the course, the
component she ranked as most important for her learning progress was
journaling. The power of her insights extended beyond herself to the learning
group. Both Sarah and I read Ruth’s online writings and acknowledged
their value for expanding our thinking.

In contrast, Sarah came to the course with well-developed
reflection skills. She co-reflected with me as her primary partner. For her
research project, she examined the online questioning strategies she used with
her tele-mentee for “building a relationship in a virtual setting.”
We actively exchanged email messages throughout her process of focusing her
topic, clarifying action research concepts, coding email messages with her
tele-mentee, analyzing data, and writing her final paper. As she was writing
her paper, she engaged in a significant co-reflection activity. To gain a
deeper understanding of action research, she re-read, reflected on, and
responded to all 11 of the chat summaries I had created to date, giving me
further food for reflection. Importantly, she indicated how online
communication supports the internalization of group-mediated learning:
“When I went into the chat that night I was a little lost. During the
chat, my confusion cleared and I started to feel I had a handle on my ideas.
Later, when Joyce listed out my claims, evidence and possible warrants [in the
chat summary], I almost did a double take — she had made everything seem
so clear and at the same time, I don’t think my notes from the chat were
this clearly set out. I’m so thankful that the wiki enables us to return
again and again because if she had just said these things to me, they would now
be lost.”

As well as being a learning facilitator, coach, and mentor,
I was also a co-learner about the art of teaching. Sarah and I had an extensive
discussion about the nature of constructivist teaching/learning that resulted
in a multifaceted view combining our different approaches. Sarah initiated:
“My main question with constructivist teaching is how do you give the
student the freedom yet provide the framework so the learning is rigorous? Is
the rigor in the final product that the teacher assigns? This doesn’t
seem true to constructivism — it seems the student must determine the
assignments?” She noted that she was “too new at independent and
action research” to feel confidence in herself as a constructivist
learner.

This struck a chord with me: “All semester I’ve
also been thinking about ‘freedom and chaos.’ I reorganized the
wiki during spring break because it was getting chaotic. The reorganization was
based on what I learned WITH you and Ruth throughout the semester. You’ve
sparked an idea for me — I think constructivist learning is successful
only with the proper balance of structure and freedom. The structure can come
from the course; it can also come from the students — inside their heads
based on prior experience and thinking.”

Sarah responded, “Although you might have seen the
course as chaos, I never really did because… I trusted you to guide me
through whatever needed to be done. I was too busy trying to understand the
readings and think of my research question to consider if things needed to be
more structured. I think I was in my own little world.” She also
acknowledged the value of her previous experiences for understanding action
research, “There have been many times during the course that I felt lost,
but I framed the information in regard to my teaching and considered how it was
true or how it applied for me in the classroom.” She added that finding
the balance of freedom and structure must be challenging in large classes, “I’m
sure you can see that Ruth and I are at different places in our learning and
that we react differently to the readings. Imagine if you had a class of 25-30.
How does the teacher create this balance then, in a constructivist
setting?”

I realized the need for more course structure while still
valuing individual initiative to drive inquiry learning: “I now
definitely see the advantages of having more structure in the course from the
beginning, with the freedom to deviate from that structure along the way if
necessary. You mentioned ‘being in your own little world.’
That’s precisely where you should be. I have a quote taped to my
bookshelf that inspires me about teaching, from Martha Graham: ‘It is
that openness and awareness and innocence of sorts that I try to cultivate
among my dancers … it is not a question of putting something in but
drawing it out, if it is there to begin with ... I would like to feel that I
had, in some way, given them the gift of themselves.’”

Sarah responded, “I like this quote from Martha Graham
— especially the part about education is ‘drawing it out as if it
is in there all the time.’ I think I wouldn’t have agreed with this
quote even about five years ago because I think that education is about
exposing students to new ways of thinking or approaching the world, but now I
see that it is true in the sense that in order for the learning to be
meaningful for the students, it needs to make sense to them and be personally
relevant.”

This discussion helped me clarify my understanding of
constructivist learning — that the freedom to co-construct knowledge
relies heavily on how an individual learner’s structure of meaning
interacts with disciplinary frameworks and with the meaning structures of
others. Because of this, teaching is a process of invention.

5. CONCLUSION

While it may be more difficult to identify indications of
group cognition in dyads than in larger groups, similar processes seem to be at
work. This paper proposes that reflection is a core activity for meaning making
and knowledge building at the small group level, whether dyadic or larger.
Reflection skills enable learners to perceive, respond to, and integrate new
perspectives, and co-reflection achieves a broader and deeper understanding
than is possible through individual reflection alone. The students in this
study used their reflection skills differently to understand and apply the
ideas and tools of action research, but the products of their differentiated
learning contributed to group cognition.

These products are embodied in communication that is
permanently captured and always accessible online. As Stahl states, “The
knowing that small groups build up in manifold forms is what becomes
internalized by their members as individual learning and externalized in their
communities as certifiable knowledge” [12]. The online medium enhances
the ability to externalize knowledge and thereby strengthens the potential for
internalization by individuals.

What factors may influence group cognition in learning
environments? The first is whether the intent to learn as a group exists,
related to the instructional model used. Other factors include learning style
preference, attitude toward technology, and the degree to which trusting
relationships are built.

Regarding technology support for group cognition, this study
suggests that “visibility” and “humanization” are vital
in the online medium. Lacking nonverbal cues to indicate understanding,
confusion, joy, delight, frustration, or anxiety, online communication needs
explicitness about thoughts, feelings, and actions to offset the potential for
misinterpretation of messages. The computer software and social capital
(respect, trust, concern, and sincerity) should support a high degree of
expressiveness, both verbal and visual. This raises other questions. What tools
and representations should be built into the software? How can the software
allow individuals the freedom and flexibility to create and co-create while
providing structure, rhythm, and visibility in an efficient manner? What is the
optimum balance? And finally, how can we assess the quality not only of
individual cognition but also of group cognition? How do we identify not only
individual empowerment but also group empowerment?

6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation
under cooperative Agreement No. 0100393. Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

7. REFERENCES

[1.] Bandura, Albert. 1997. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: W.H. Freeman.

[2.] Barab, S. A, MaKinster, J. G.,
& Scheckler, R. 2003. “Designing System Dualities: Characterizing a
Web-supported Professional Development Community.” The Information Society, 19: 237-256.

[3.] Boud, D.; Keogh, R; and Walker, D.
1985. “Promoting Reflection in Learning: A Model.” In Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning.
Edited by D. Boud, R. Keogh, and D. Walker. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

[4.] Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University Press.

[5.] Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy and Education. New York: The Free
Press.

[6.] Dewey, John. 1997. How We Think. Mineola,
NY: Dover
Publications.

[7.] Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of
the Oppressed; 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Continuum.

[8.] Mezirow, Jack. 2000. Learning as Transformation. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.

[9.] Paloff, R.M. and Pratt, K. 2003.
The Virtual Student: A Profile and Guide to Working with Online Learners. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.

[10.] Preece, Jenny. 2000. Online
Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chichester:
John Wiley & Sons.

[11.] Schon, Donald. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books.

[12.] Stahl, Gerry. 2004.
“Mediation and Group Cognition.” This volume.

[13.] Vygotsky, L. 1978. Mind in Society. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University Press.

[14.] Vygotsky, Lev. 1986. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.

[15.] Wells, Gordon. 1999. Dialogic Inquiry. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

[16.] Wenger, E., McDermott, R., &
Snyder, W. 2002. Cultivating Communities
of Practice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Business School
Press.

Communities of Reflection-Practice and
Clash of Communities: Thoughts on the (Re-)Design of Classes in Humanities

Johannes Strobel

University of
Missouri-Columbia, Columbia,
MO

[email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

Grounded in constructivist instructional philosophy [5] and
a view that the purpose of schooling is to prepare students for a changing
workplace [7; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, www.21stcenturyskills.org],
learning scientists turned to communities of practice (CoPs) to get inspiration
for the design of learning activities in classrooms that resemble the
'authentic' and 'real-world' situations found in CoPs outside of schools. For
domains that are naturally close to the workforce, like domains in the
sciences, technology, engineering, math, and others, it seems a perfect match
and classroom environments are transformed to resemble CoPs [4; 6; 9].

How would a similar attempt work with domains traditionally
not as close to the workforce and situated in the humanities, and how would
domain-differences play a role in the design of CoPs within formal in-school
education? The purpose of this position paper is to provide a preliminary
examination of the complexity of transferring the ideas of CoPs into the
re-design of humanities classrooms. The context of this position paper is an
on-going process on re-designing classes that lie in the core of humanities,
particularly classes in the Philosophy of Science (PoS) and several classes in
Religious Studies.

While studying the PoS, one engages in questions such as:
“What is the nature of science, scientific explanation, and scientific
knowledge?”; “What are the underlying theories of truth in
science?”; “What are conceptual consequences modern science imposes
generally on basic philosophies of knowledge and nature?”; and
“What makes an investigation scientific?” In short, PoS asks
questions on the assumptions of scientific belief and practice.

Religious Studies is a humanistic discipline that uses a
variety of methodologies from other disciplines like sociology and
anthropology. A widely accepted definition of religion states that it is
"a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and
long-lasting moods and motivations in [people] by formulating conceptions of a
general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of
factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic" [3],
but as an hermeneutic discipline it is better to be cautious, for as Smith
(1998) says "One re-defines religion every time one studies it" [10].

2. Types of Communities

2.1. Communities of Practice

For a number of scholars, the design of instruction is the
same as the design of practice fields, which means that "designing a
learning environment begins with identifying what is to be learned and
reciprocally, the real world situations in which the activity occurs" [1].
Learning outcomes are derived from these situations with authenticity as their
most valued attribute; they need to have similar "cognitive demands the
learner would encounter in the real world" [1]. In practice fields,
students are engaged in domain-related practices around domain-related problems
like how to design a bridge, rather than around school problems like
well-structured story problems involving right/wrong solutions to
formula-driven problems.

In their critique on the shortcomings of practice fields and
their call for CoPs in education, Barab & Duffy argue that schools have
inherent problems to becoming practice fields because the activities are still
connected with grades - which makes them unauthentic - and they are solely
practice-oriented and not oriented towards real contributions to a community
outside of their school [1].

2.2. Communities of Reflection

Both approaches - practice fields and communities of
practice - have a strong underlying assumption that these CoPs are communities practicing
or doing commonly
performed tasks. It is safe to say that there is a wide acceptance of the fact
that communities of practice in chemistry, for example, are full of people
actually doing chemistry and being engaged in a CoP. The situation looks
different for the particular approach to practice advocated by a field like the
Philosophy of Science. There are not a lot of communities practicing
these approaches outside of academia. Because most practitioners are professional
philosophers employed by schools and universities, there are no well-defined
CoPs for the Philosophy of Science.

There are, however, a lot of practitioners actively engaged
in scientific CoPs practicing science. They operate under assumptions within
their scientific field, and therefore, in Barab's and Duffy's sense, can be
seen as a CoP for the field of Philosophy of Science [1], i.e., a CoP of
practicing chemists engages in reflection-in-action as part of their practice
as "reflective practitioners" [8]. However, people engaged in the CoP
of chemistry are not necessarily as equally involved in the practice of
reflection as they are in the actual practice of chemistry. Reflecting on their
assumptions and engaging in a meta-discourse of their own practice does not
form the center of their day-to-day work; these may be under-articulated, and
tacit elements. I propose a distinction between the overall CoP and the
sub-community of reflection (CoR). This distinction might help us to better
focus on different elements, functions, and goals of qualitatively different
communities within a larger CoP. A field like PoS can help to make reflective
components and tacit elements of a CoP more explicit. Under-utilized fields or
fields which are perceived to have less value for a larger CoP, like PoS,
become more important and necessary for broader issues when designing CoPs in
classrooms.

2.3. Communities of Reflection-Practice

So far, this paper has distinguished between a community of
practice and a sub-community of reflection. In the CoP of chemistry there is a
practice of chemistry and a practice of reflection on doing chemistry. These
intertwined communities have well-defined boundaries that are set by
professions, widely accepted forms and modes of contribution to a larger
community, and they inform each other in their practice.

Let's examine if the proposed distinction is useful, or if
we need further refinement, by beginning to focus on the domain of Religious
Studies. When we try to build a CoP in classrooms, who are the practitioners we
focus on in the field of Religious Studies? We cannot start with religious
professionals like church workers or medicine women. This focus would be too
narrow and would include only areas of theology, ministry, or religious
education, which are not the same as Religious Studies. The aim of Religious
Studies is much broader, and is described earlier in this paper.

If we are not focusing on 'religious' professionals, there
are no other professions outside of academia and we have to turn to a much
larger spectrum to find an example of practice. Human beings and/or different
cultural systems at large come to mind. Religion is a worldwide phenomenon and
depending where individual researchers draw their definitory lines, religion seems
to be everywhere. This multitude of 'cultural' CoPs are different from the CoPs
described in earlier sections of this paper: the practice is not defined by
professions and by well-set boundaries. Other aspects are similar: there are
commonly shared practices, well-accepted forms and modes of contribution to a
larger community, and there is a practice of reflection within the different
CoPs.

Does the introduction of cultural CoPs help us to build CoPs
in Religious Studies classrooms? Engineering professors and students can engage
in the building of bridges and can reflect on their practice and the practice
of engineers outside of classrooms who are building bridges, and it would be an
'authentic' activity. Religious Studies scholars would find it difficult and
artificial to build religious communities or cults and establish rituals and
other religious activities in their classroom. Religious Studies scholars and
their students are not producing sacred texts and their time for research and
teaching is not referred to as sacred time. Religious Studies scholars, rather,
are engaged in comparative studies, ontological development, reflections on the
nature of religion, and reflections on the impact of religions in other areas
of culture such as politics.

Religious Studies is consistent with CoPs that deal with a
variety of different CoPs and is not necessarily the reflective sub-community
of one particular CoP. The practice of Religious Studies scholars is solely
reflective and does not necessarily influence the practice of the CoPs it is
reflecting on. I propose a distinction between a community of reflection which
is a sub-set of the community of practice, and a community of
Reflection-Practice (CoRP).

3. CLASH OF COMMUNITIES

The search for instructional strategies and design models
for communities of practice in school environments revealed several appealing
methods, including inquiry-based, discovery-based, real world case-based, and
problem-based scenarios, an involvement of out-of-school experts and contributions
to communities surrounding the school or remote ones through Information and
Communication Technology (ICT).

For subject areas that draw their examples from defined
jobs, tasks, and problems like engineering or biology, the design of
'real-world' challenges is hard but rather well-structured by definition.
Medical and business students are engaged in case studies, often with real
patients or clients; engineering students build bridges in parks and
environment-friendly houses; bio-technology students unveil genome structures
to design genetically altered food together with a bio-tech company; journalism
students are regular contributors to news media; and instructional design
students (re-)design training and support systems with human development departments.

Designing learning environments that are oriented towards
'real-world' challenges for PoS, Religious Studies, or other similar
disciplines is harder and ill-structured, especially if it is not even clear
what these might be or how they could be staked out.

Often, the connection with real world problems added
complexity and richness into classrooms, which were both seemingly missing from
textbook learning or simplified school examples. For the students though, it is
more that the problems add an engagement with responsibilities, procedures and
constraints that they are likely to discover in the jobs they seek outside the
classroom. The change that came with a stronger emphasis on the implementation
of recent developments in learning sciences was welcomed, not only due to the
fact that the field of learning sciences responded to a need, but also because
the development of newer learning theories was deeply rooted in the fields of
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and other workforce-oriented
fields.

How do these developments look when applied to the
humanities and related fields? We experience a clash of cultures when we bring
models and approaches of the learning sciences together with subject areas for
which they were not developed, i.e., in which models are implemented rather
than developed. The implementation can result in emerging struggles to
negotiate data structures and ontologies [4], in inappropriate use of methods,
and in conflicts between scientific inquiry methods and hermeneutic ones in
historical contexts (see example in [2]).

When the learning sciences meet a subject area like PoS,
with its community of scholars (instructors and practitioners) in the field,
questions arise and need to be addressed, such as: “How does the learning
sciences community interact with the other community?”; “Are they
building a new community?”; “Are they supporting each other or interfering
with each other?”; and “Are they supporting or objecting to images
of the community instead of the community itself?”

I am far from putting value behind the different ways change
can appear from the interaction between different communities. Change can be
(not) wanted, (not) desired, or even (un)desirable. However, the interaction
and the change still need careful attention.

4. CONCLUSION

Using some classes in humanities as lenses to look at CoPs,
these preliminary thoughts question an uncritical use of the term CoP to
describe and prescribe communities without differentiating between different
types and functions of communities. The implications of the distinction between
communities of practice, communities of reflection, and communities of
reflection-practice and their intertwined relationships as well as the
potential and experienced clashes of communities are numerous: concepts,
models, and theories developed in the learning sciences might not work as well
in some communities as in others. Still, it is in the interest of both, the
numerous learning sciences communities and the communities of humanities
scholars, to engage in projects that have the goal to enrich students' learning
experiences beyond the school walls.

Note: The author
is grateful for comments by Gerry Stahl on an earlier version of this paper.

5. REFERENCES

[1.] Barab, S. and Duffy, T. 2000. From
practice fields to communities of practice. In: D.H. Jonassen & S.M.
Land (Eds.), Theoretical
foundations of learning environments. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.

[2.] Bell, P. 2004. Promoting
Disciplinary-Sensitive Argumentation Across History and Science in the
Elementary School Classroom. In: Y. B. Kafai, W. A. Sandoval, N. Enyedy, A.S.
Nixon, F. Herrera (Eds.), Embracing Diversity in the Learning Sciences. Proceedings
of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.

[3.] Geertz, C. 1965. Religion as a
Cultural System. In: Banton, Michael (Ed.), Association
of the Social Anthropologists Monographs No.3: Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. London, UK:
Tavistock Publications.

[4.] Klamma, R. 2004. Supporting
Communication and Knowledge Creation in Digitally Networked Cultural Science
Communities. ACM SIG Group Bulletin,
current issue.

[5.] Reil, M., and Becker, H.J. 2000. The beliefs, practices and computer usage of
teacher-leaders. Teaching Learning and Computing, the Center for Research
of Information Technologies and Organizations, University
of California, Irvine. Retrieved, January 8, 2003, from:
http://www.crito.uci.edu/tlc/findings/aera/

[6.] Rohde, M. and Wulf, V. 2004.
Supporting Communities of Practice in Applied Computer Science Studies, ACM
SIG Group Bulletin, current issue.

[7.] Secretary’s Commission on
Achieving Necessary Skills. 1991. What
work requires of schools: A SCANS report for America 2000. Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

[8.] Schoen, D. 1984. The Reflective
practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York, NY:
Basic Books.

[9.] Shaffer, D.W. 2004. Pedagogical
praxis: using technology to build professional communities of practice. ACM
SIG Group Bulletin, current issue.

[10.] Smith, J.Z. 1998. Religion,
Religions, Religious. In: M. C. Taylor (Ed.), Critical Terms for Religious
Studies. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.

Supporting Communication and Knowledge Creation in Digitally
Networked Communities in the Humanities

Ralf Klamma
and Marc Spaniol

RWTH
Aachen, Lehrstuhl für Informatik V

Aachen, Germany

[email-masked]

[email-masked]

1. REQUIREMENTS FOR
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE IN THE HUMANITIES

Scholarly
communication in the humanities heavily depends on the discursive nature of
knowledge creation and the media that is in use. This communication has changed
over the centuries due to the evolution of media, altering not only the
communicational culture of scholars regarding their archives and text
production strategies but also the communication situation in society, leading
to scientific, artistic, and societal revolutions. The change from scroll to
book in the edition of the Babylonian Talmud is a good example of such a medium
revolution. The interdisciplinary collaborative research center “Media
and cultural communication”[5] was founded in 1999 to research the
nature and impact of media on the discourses in cultural communication.
Historically, and by creating new interdisciplinary workplaces for scientists
in the 21st century, our subproject analyzes the impact of networked
information systems on cooperation and knowledge organization in scientific
communities and public debates.

Knowledge
creation processes, also known as learning processes, can be researched by
socio-cultural constructivist theories of learning like those advanced by
Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bateson [1; 8; 11]. Because knowledge creation in science
is often a collaborative and communicative endeavour that is based on shared
experience and practice involving the apprenticeship of student researchers, we
deploy approaches where knowledge emerges in communities of practice (CoP) by
discursive assignment of sense [6; 12]. For historical and actual communities
of practice in science we make the basic assumption that there are two
disciplinary structures for the archives of the discourses [10]: goal and
forward-oriented (‘linear’) structures on the one hand, and
discursive and displaying (‘non-linear’) structures on the other.
In the linear case, the ‘old knowledge’ is left behind, vanishes in
the archive, and is replaced by newly published knowledge. In the non-linear
case, ‘old knowledge’ can be introduced into the ongoing discourse
at any time. This type of knowledge is kept in disciplinary dynamic archives
and contextualized in the historical process. In the mediation process,
‘old’ knowledge is not subsumed in the creation of
‘new’ knowledge, but is transcribed and displayed [3; 4]. The
process of displaying this knowledge is inherently linked with the knowledge
creation process and, therefore, is a media problem on its own. The
hermeneutical process is nerved by self-reflective loops of insight and
mediation. The appropriate IS metaphor for these processes is the model of
multimedia hypertext or hypermedia.

Supporting
communication and knowledge creation in digitally networked cultural science
communities represents a specific challenge for the development and
organizational-structure of hypermedia information systems due to at least
three reasons. First, the
discursive nature of knowledge creation in the humanities is based on an
intense exposure to hypermedia artifacts and underlying theories that require the
support of different digital media to be combined with (almost) arbitrary
metadata, constituting the situational background of an artifact. These digital
artifacts have special
semantics for each user and each community of practice. Dynamic context
management concepts for digital hypermedia artifacts supporting a high degree
of semantic freedom are thus needed for discourses in the
humanities. Second, open repositories are an
indispensable prerequisite for scaling such hypermedia systems beyond the
purposes of one community of practice. Scientific discourses in an informed
society would then not be isolated to the ivory tower. Modern systems should
allow clients of any kind to check out and modify archives and bring them back
into the discussion again, fostering discourse and simultaneously assuring
intellectual property. We are aware that this is not only a requirement of a
class of systems but that it will be accompanied by the transformation of the
humanities themselves.

A naive
multimedia understanding - e.g. that hypermedia can transport knowledge -
isn’t sufficient, as complex interrelations between media exist as well
as complex cultural interfaces to these media [7]. So, advanced hypermedia
management strategies (fluid archives) are a crucial
factor in science and learning processes instead of old-fashioned
de-contextualization strategies propagated in state-of-the-art information
systems.

Learning in
communities of practice needs to bridge the gap between semantic freedom in
(almost) arbitrary metadata annotations, scalable repository technologies and
fluidity. The success of collaborative hypermedia systems heavily depends on
the discursive nature of knowledge creation. Information systems that assist
cross-disciplinary communities of practice should be able to capture,
visualize, and support the ongoing scientific discourse in order to keep
participants informed and committed to the knowledge creation process. Toward
this end, we present a case study, using the MECCA discourse support system for a movie
research community.

2. MECCA: THE CASE OF A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE IN
THE FILM STUDIES

The CoP in
this case is composed of people cooperating with our collaborative research
center who are conducting multidisciplinary research concerning facial
semantics in movies. The CoP is physically distributed throughout the
departments of film studies in three German cities. Members of the CoP have
diverse educational backgrounds, e.g. film studies, history of art, graphical
design, and have varying levels of professional experience. The community
members already have different interests and point of views, due to their
educational and cultural background. Their joint enterprise is to analyze the
semantics of facial expression in movies by classification of and comment on
movie scenes in four dimensions: the beautiful face, the dramatic face, the
portrait, and mass faces. By the nature of their research tasks, the community
members very often have different points of view on a shared multimedia
artifact, and these differences are expressed through the use of distinctive
vocabularies. When trying to find a common level of communication the community
is very often forced to restrict their vocabulary to a minimum or else to make
use of terms that are irritating to other members having another background or
research focus. One example is the meaning of the term “text.” An
art historian stated that she would never use the term “text” for
movies, while the other members wanted to use the term in the broadest sense
possible.

A major
aspect influencing the CoP is its distribution among several universities in Germany.
For that reason, a collaborative information system and a collective server to
share multimedia files is of great importance to them. Using a collective
multimedia artifact server would not only foster collaboration among
researchers, but it would also enable students to supplement rare on-campus
screenings. Obviously, the knowledge creation process displayed is
discourse-oriented collaboration on the basis of movie samples covering their
research topic. So, they learn by having screenings together in order to
classify and comment on them. Here, we detected that a crucial aspect of the
CoP was the need for almost arbitrary classification, re-combination, and
annotation features of multimedia artifacts to be made accessible to the
community members. This implies that aspects of semantic freedom need to be embedded into the system, allowing the
almost arbitrary re‑contextualization of multimedia artefacts. However,
another requirement was derived by the demand to protect their individual
property because in research communities the risk of plagiarism should not be
underestimated. In addition, another, previously unmentioned, aspect is the
commentary relationship of the media themselves, as information cannot be
regarded as independent from the medium through which it is transmitted. That
means, a media theory considered as an isolated information carrier of content
is not sufficient; the result is the need for a system that carries (at least)
metadata about the situational context (background) of its own creation.
Nevertheless, metadata only are not able to carry the needed information
without any graphical representation. For that reason, the CoP needed a system
expressing semantic relationships between various media artifacts by hiding the
complexity of storing and retrieving the information. To meet the requirements
of the community we have searched for an alternative to let them express these
relationships in an understandable and intuitive procedure similar to common
working practices. Therefore, we agreed on an enriched video editing system
tool able to visualize relationships between media. Even the commentary
relationships of media, however, didn’t resolve the terminological
conflicts after a common classification scheme was created.

Another
system requirement of creating individual reference collections was derived
(branched) from the core classification scheme that is common in paper-based
work in the cultural sciences. To progress scientifically, it is necessary not
only to externalize individual findings by a classification schema (which is
fine for things such as dissertational work) but also to share and align the
findings with the other members of the CoP in a common classification schema
that promotes the project needs (which is particularly necessary for the
research of facial semantics in movies, independent of the need in general).
Naturally, the views of individuals and the CoP as a whole are often
conflicting, offering innovative potential for research insights and new
research questions. Scientists want to discuss their different point of views
and the resulting productive disturbances in the epistemological process.
Furthermore, for writing research papers reflecting the discursive process of
knowledge creation, the CoP needs a system that allows the logging and back‑tracking
of decisions rendered in the common classification creation process, which
allows for a better understanding of the overall process. The underlying
classification scheme caused such difficulties in interpreting and
understanding the other members’ views on certain aspects that exchangeability
and recoverability were other aspects the CoP needed in order to make the
emerging difficulties productive for their continuous learning process.

A major
deficit of existing collaboration systems in the humanities is the restrictive
administration of reference collections. In general, reference collections (fluid archives) are possible by branching
off from the community archive at a certain point in time. However,
incorporating modifications performed individually or in collaboration into the
previously checked out data set in the system is basically impossible. On the
one hand, existing collections might be refined and rearranged almost
infinitely [2], but don’t allow the creation of an individual index in
terms of the categorization scheme. On the other hand, systems like WEL [9]
allow users to check out the overall terminology in order to modify the common
index for individual purposes, but block its re-insertion into the established
community-wide system. To allow parallel processing of hypermedia in reference
collection annotations, categorizations and dependencies can be checked out and
compared for similarities and differences. The visualization of the results is
then a consequent step in supporting the discussion process that makes the emerging
difficulties in the semantic capturing productive. It allows user adaptation of
the underlying classification scheme as well as assigning hypermedia artifacts
to certain categories. Additionally, recovery and loading features are included
to exchange and discuss the categorizations within the CoP and to compare their
development over time.

The focal
point for collaboration in cultural science communities is a collective
multimedia artifact repository because it represents the basis for all
activities within the CoP. This requirement makes a logical united repository
essential. However, this might lead to problems in cases of the CoP having only
part-time access to web resources. Personal and group collections can also be
used, but here the need for protecting intellectual property and branching data
sets in reference collections can lead to conflicts as well. This leads to more
or less fine-grained community self-organization issues, particularly in regard
to the protection of intellectual property. This disturbs, somewhat, the theory
of a community of practice, but it is inevitable because of the tendency of
individual researchers to follow their own career plans instead of the plans of
the shared practice. To ensure the intellectual property rights of the
individual members of the community - again, a centralized component - a method
is needed to identify a CoP as itself, and to identify roles within that
community. Based on the role of a community member within the system, an
individual might be allowed to perform only a limited set of actions or might
not be allowed to access all the documents stored within collections. Another
aspect is the search and retrieval features to find previous hypermedia
artifacts and the comments pertaining to them not only on the global hypermedia
artifact set, but on shareable group collections as well. Discourses in the
humanities commonly start with research on the results achieved in former
discourses. Following Foucault, we can say that the discourse creates the
things it is talking about. Researchers aim at refining the underlying theory
that is to be applied to hypermedia artifacts as a result of their discourse.
The retrieval and re-contextualization of previous discussion stored in
collections and hypermedia structures is of even greater importance than
before.

In 2002,
the MECCA
system built from the discussed requirements was introduced to our colleagues
as a multimedia screening environment designed to foster scholarly
collaboration in a distributed setting as well as an environment that empowers
students to take screenings at home instead of being limited to rare on-campus
screenings. The basic idea has been taken from the original project
“Berliner sehen” developed at MIT by Kurt Fendt and Ellen Crocker
[2]. MECCA
itself is specially designed for the community of researchers and students that
has been described in this paper. Technical issues of the systems are discussed
in other publications [5]. The MECCA
case study demonstrates that knowledge creation discourses involve a lot of
“re-writing” of discourse artifacts within or across media. Hence,
the systems should support the full richness of media usage while making
careful choices about which media-related activities should be captured and
archived. Interfaces tied to multimedia metadata description standards like
MPEG-7 no longer make an integration of rich media and formal models an exotic
adventure that cannot be scaled over the boundaries of one community of
practice. We are currently working together with the Institute for the History
of Urban Planning at the RWTH Aachen on a project for the re-building of
scientific structures in Afghanistan.
A collaborative hypermedia repository with information about historic sites and
monuments aims to help the scattered community of scientists related to the
preservation of cultural heritage to share knowledge and to build new
scientific relations, especially between the pre-war and post-war generation of
scientists. Lessons learned from the MECCA
case study can be applied in the construction and management of the new system.
Research in the cultural science center “Media and Cultural
Communication” will focus in the future also on the distributed agency of
people performing discourses.

3. Acknowledgements

This work
was supported by the German National Science Foundation (DFG) within the
collaborative research center SFB/FK 427 “Media and cultural
communication,” and by the 6th Framework IST programme of the
EC through the Network of Excellence in Professional Learning (PROLEARN)
IST-2003-507310.

4. REFERENCES

[1.] Bateson,
G. 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Boulder,
CO: Paladin Books.

[2.] Fendt, K. 2001. Contextualizing Content. In: Knecht, M.,
Hammerstein, K. (eds.): Languages across
the curriculum. Columbus,
Ohio: National East Asian
Language Resource Center/Ohio State University.

[3.] Jäger, L. 2002. Transkriptivität. Zur medialen Logik der
kulturellen Semantik. In: L. Jäger, G. Stanitzek: Transkribieren - Medien/Lektüre. Munich, Germany:
Wilhelm Fink Verlag (in German).

[4.] Jäger, L., Stanitzek, G. (eds.) 2002. Transkribieren - Medien/Lektüre. Munich, Germany:
Wilhelm Fink Verlag (in German).

[5.] Klamma, R., Spaniol, M. 2004. Open Hypermedia Management for
E-learning in the Humanities. Proceedings
of ICALT 2004. Joensuu,
Finland: August
30—September 2.

[6.] Lave, J. and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated
learning – Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, MA:
University Press.

[7.]
Manovich, L. 2001. The Language of New
Media. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.

[8.] Piaget, J. 1957. Construction of reality in the child,
London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

[9.] Schmidt, J.W., Sehring, H.-W., Warnke, M. 2001. Der Bildindex zur
Politischen Ikonographie in der Warburg Electronic Library -Einsichten eines
interdisziplinären Projektes. In: Archivprozesse.
Cologne, Germany:
DuMont (in German).

[10.] Snow,
C. P. 1959. The two cultures. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

[11.]
Vygotsky, L. S. 1962. Thought and
Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[12.] Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge
University Press.

Supporting Communities of Practice in
Applied Computer Science Studies

Ralf Klamma

Lehrstuhl
für Informatik V, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany.

[email-masked]

Markus Rohde

IISI - International Institute for
Socio-Informatics, Bonn, Germany.

[email-masked]

Volker Wulf

Institute for Information Systems, University
of Siegen, Siegen, Germany, and

Fraunhofer
Institute for Applied Information Technology (FhG-FIT), Augustin, Germany

[email-masked]

ABSTRACT

The authors
discuss the experience of a longitudinal study of the course “High-tech
Entrepreneurship and New Media.” The course design is based on
socio-cultural theories of learning and considers the role of social capital in
entrepreneurial networks. By integrating student teams into the communities of
practice of local start-ups, we offer learning opportunities to students,
companies, and academia. The student teams are connected to each other and to
their supervisors in academia and practice through a community system.
Moreover, the course is accompanied by a series of lectures and group
discussions. So far, the course has been conducted three times at RWTH Aachen
and the University
of Siegen.

1. COMMUNITY-BASED LEARNING IN APPLIED COMPUTER SCIENCE

The course
“High-tech Entrepreneurship and New Media,” now in its fourth year
of existence and held at two German research universities, is the result of the
unhappiness of the authors with classical and “new” e-learning
teaching efforts in applied computer science at German universities. Among
others, we made three observations that we want to address here: 1) Even though
many students worked as software developers in local entrepreneurial and
established companies, their practice was not reflected in university teaching
at all. In singular cases the work led to successful joint diploma thesis
projects and excellent job offers. Our idea was to establish a course that
stabilizes the reflection of student practice and to move the newest ideas of
software engineering from the university into practice. 2) Local high-tech companies,
founded mostly by university graduates, were only loosely linked to their
birth-giving universities. Compared to US universities, the level of
interaction between academia and industry is too low. The innovation potential
and the needs of the companies are not addressed in a sufficient way. Our main
idea was to offer entrepreneurs a platform to reflect about their experiences,
to sensitize students for entrepreneurial activities, and to let students work
on real-world problems instead of fabricated lab examples. 3) The way new
teaching technology is introduced leads to disappointing results in computer
science. Often technologies only mimic classical teaching methods or mask the
pedagogical disorientation in applied computer science between the curricula of
the natural sciences and engineering. Our idea was to apply socio-cultural
theories of learning and identity building [1; 11; 17—19; 21], following
our enquiries of US entrepreneurial education and networks around the MIT (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA) area, and suitable collaboration tools
to small connected groups of computer science students working on real world
problems in local companies.

Because we
rigorously documented and evaluated the course from its early days until now,
we have a huge amount of data which, for several reasons, we constantly linked
to the applied theories. On the practical side, we re-designed and adjusted the
course in reaction to the analysis made and the overall dramatic change in the
German university teaching system (Bologna
process). On a theoretical side, we tried to overcome our naïve
understanding of socio-psychological theories [3; 4; 12], especially
communities of practice [2; 10; 20], and to formulate a more realistic
understanding of shared interactions and shared cultures in groups, community
and networks [6; 15]. The course design and several evaluations were reported
in various places [8; 9; 13; 14]. Therefore, we will only introduce this topic
very briefly. In this paper, we primarily want to reflect on the long-term
effects our study’s ramifications may have on students, our teaching
practice, the entrepreneurial networks and technology.

2. COURSE STRUCTURE AND IMPLEMENTATION

In the
course, several groups of computer science students each work on a concrete
project task for a start-up company. The courses are accompanied by a series of
lectures in which university lecturers and practitioners present topics
relevant to entrepreneurship and media. The cooperation of students and practitioners
in carrying out a common real-world task should allow the establishment of a
shared practice and, therefore, mutual learning. Group-oriented learning
processes, especially among the student teams and between them and their
academic advisors, ought to be facilitated by a community system. Thus, the
instructors put task-relevant learning materials on the community system.
Moreover, it was supposed to work as a forum of discussion among students and
guest lecturers from industry and academia. The system supported cooperation
within and between working groups. Additionally, it has been used as an archive
for lecture and project materials.

In the
first meeting, the students interested in the course were introduced to the
basic concept of this type of courses; the tasks were presented briefly and
project groups were formed. The students then chose one of the presented
project tasks and formed appropriate working groups. Following this, students
took an intense two-day tutorial on software engineering methods, project
management techniques and other relevant issues. The students had meetings with
their start-ups in order to gather information about their objectives, projects
and working methods. The project groups and tutors compiled and agreed upon
concrete project aims for the execution of the practical tasks, and a realistic
project plan that was to be examined in the first review. With regard to the
accompanying lecture, speakers from academia and practice rotated. The students
got perspectives from management consultants, venture capitalists, software
developers, and personnel specialists, who supplied topic-referred empiric
reports and were available for discussions and critical inquiries. In the
reviews, the project groups mutually presented each other their results and
discussed the further procedure together with the lecturers and experts. These
review sessions also served to exchange experiences and offered the possibility
of one group benefiting from the progress and findings of another project group.
At the end of the term, students, lecturers, and entrepreneurs had a final
meeting. The project results were presented by the project groups and
discussed.

3. EVALUATION METHODS

The authors
follow the idea developed by Gerry Stahl that community-based learning should
be analyzed at the intermediate level of small groups of individuals within the
community [16]. Therefore, we mainly observed the performance of the students
within the groups. The materials were created, collected, and analyzed by
advanced students of psychology under the supervision of a trained
psychologist. We used different qualitative methods for the enquiries: 1) the
lecturers composed several lecture analyses, which stated progress, discussion
with students, and other characteristics. For extern lecturers, these protocols
were composed by university members; 2) explorative semi-structured interviews
with students and supervisors from academia and industries were conducted. All
interviews have been recorded with DAT-recording and fully transcribed. In the
evaluation, the answers were transformed into a table categorized by the role
of students and academic and entrepreneurial supervisors. The interviews have
been analyzed descriptively; 3) interaction within the community-system was recorded,
as was email-exchange between students and their cooperation partners in the
start-ups; 4) as part of the final arrangement and subsequent to the
presentation of the project results, a 45-minute open discussion took place
between students, lecturers, and cooperation partners from the start-ups, where
students especially were asked to give feedback concerning the concept and
structure of the lectures. The course of discussion was recorded.

4. COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
(CoP), SOCIAL IDENTITY, AND SOCIAL CAPITAL IN ENTERPRENEURIAL NETWORKS

To find evidence that our ideas had overcome the
observations we noted in the first section, we compared our empirical analysis
with the analysis we made while studying the entrepreneurial teaching and
networks around MIT in the United
States. Our recent research disclosed four
types of networking mechanisms in the entrepreneurial scene around the MIT Entrepreneurship
Center [5; 7]:

Type 1: Matchmaking events like
informal beer-and-pizza meetings or formal dinners to reduce risks of
contacting possible business partners.

Type 2: Social families such as shared
dormitories, classes and research labs (peer group effect).

Type 3: Personal reputation networks for
economic action gained through personal expertise and experience.

Type 4: Inter-organisational relations
between start-ups, the university, and venture capital firms by means of
intellectual capital management.

These four
types of networks are not independent from each other. For balancing lock-in
syndromes, transactional openness, value injection, trust, and solidarity all
four kinds of social networks are needed. If we assume that the situation in
the Boston region is far better than in Germany, and if we assume that we can
improve the situation locally by fostering learning among students and among
other members in the network, we can analyse what our impact was and is. We
have reported elsewhere about design flaws and practical problems in the course
and how we dealt with them. Here, we want to concentrate on the question: Did the students learn how to network?

We know
from our study of entrepreneurial networks in Boston that newcomers have only faint ideas
about networks and networking, but experienced players know how to make use of
social capital in the networks. The CoP between the students can be compared
with peer group effects found in the MIT study. Students within the groups
build up social capital (or not) leading to relationships beyond the scope of
the course. Still, the lab students do joint work in other contexts like course
homework or master thesis work. We can monitor that the students still
use the community system, especially for downloading materials not stored
elsewhere, like taped videos of the review sessions and personal information
about other lab members. Some
of them have the same cultural background, but we can also observe cooperation
between students from different countries but the same year. The group
structure was developed, self-organised and described as non-hierarchical. Most
important, the barriers for the establishment of a CoP between university
students and start-up companies are limited resources (time and persons) and
cultural differences. The differences, especially in cultural background and
historical experiences, between the “student” and
“entrepreneur” groups might make processes of social identification
more difficult, and therefore successful community-building less likely.

Nevertheless, good personal relationships and rich social
capital were established between some students and practitioners. Self-organized
and non-hierarchical structures supported the building of social capital within
the groups. In all groups, learning mechanisms of legitimate participation proved
successful, especially if the students reported on high-intensity learning as
part of their collaborative practice in the groups. In particular, a Thai
student in the third instance of the course at RWTH Aachen was asked to prepare
her master’s thesis in computer science for the very same company with
which she did the course project. Moreover, her mate was also able to get a
thesis topic in the company. In such situations it is hard to analyze to what
extent the reputation building process of the course has contributed to the
final result. We see this as an indicator that we were successful in
establishing networks of reputation in the region (type 3).

The personal reputation of the supervisors from the
university within the entrepreneurial networks has been leveraged by the
courses. The supervisors are included in information exchange networks and are
invited to start-up related events like business plan competition, company
fairs and so on. In particular, the contact between the course supervisors and
the local university entrepreneurship center from which lecturers were invited
to present in the course lecture series helped to establish stable relationships
and social capital within the reputation network of the high-tech/new media
cluster (type 3).

The events are part of type 1 networks, which foster initial
matchmaking and reduce risks of cold calls by opening informal meeting
opportunities. Seldom, if ever, do computer science master student visit these
events. Most of the attendees from the university are PhD students or alumni.
This is very different from the situation around MIT (add to that the fact that
the number of events is a magnitude higher in Boston). The use of social capital in this
network type is thus limited. To overcome this situation, students should be
motivated to visit these events on a regular basis.

The fourth network type is very different in the US and in Germany, due largely to different
legal regulations concerning intellectual capital and a different venture
capital culture. Intellectual capital issues were raised selectively in the
course, but it never approximated the signature of a non-disclosure agreement
like it was usual to do in the entrepreneurship lab at the MIT Sloan School of
Management. Furthermore, the start-up representatives never discussed seriously
with the students the role of intellectual capital and the possibilities of an
actual start-up. Neither side was very experienced in these topics due to the
non-existence of a comprehensive entrepreneurship curriculum at the university.
No real money was on the table, thus the use of intellectual and social capital
in this network type was not comparable to the situation found in Boston. But both the
handling of intellectual capital and the venture capital culture has changed
dramatically during the past several years in the direction of US-type
regulation. Intellectual capital handling by the university has become much
tougher over the last year, and always includes royalties for university
inventions made in such courses.

To conclude, we can say that the type 2 and 3 networks are
being supported by the course directly but because of regional differences the
support for type 1 and 4 networks can be leveraged in the future. This is
important because type 1 and 4 networks can prohibit members of type 2 and 3
networks from social and cognitive lock-in situations. First, we provide a
general openness of the network for newcomers. Second, we ground actions into
reality. To follow the careers of students we need to install a long-term
monitoring system which allows us to keep track of the student’s
development. This should be a function of the community system that is in
place.

5. REFERENCES

[1.]
Bateson, G. 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Boulder, CO:
Paladin Books.

[2.] Brown,
J.S. and Duguid, P. 1991. Organizational learning and Communities of Practice:
Towards a unified view of working, learning, and evaluation. Organization Science 2(1): 40--58.

[3.] Bourdieu, P. 1983. Forms of Capital. In: Richards, J. C.
ed.: Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.

[4.] Cohen, D. and Prusak, L. 2001. In good company – How social capital
makes organizations work. Boston, MA: Harvard
Business School
Press.

[5.] Funken, C., Meister, M.n 2003. Netzwerke
als Singles Bars, Affinity groups und interorganisationales Regime. Zu einigen
Schwierigkeiten, das soziale Geschehen von Unternehmensgründungen
informationstechnisch zu unterstützen. In: Christaller, T., Wehner, J.
(eds.): Autonome Maschinen. Paderborn,
Germany: Fink
Verlag.

[6.]
Huysman, M., and Wulf, V. (eds.) 2004. Social
Capital and Information Technology, Cambridge,
MA/London UK:
MIT Press.

[7.] Jarke, M., Klamma, R., Marock, J.
2003. Gründerausbildung und Gründernetze im Umfeld
technischer Hochschulen: ein wirtschaftsinformatischer Versuch. In: Nathusius, K. (ed.): Zu den Wirkungen des regionalen Kontexts auf
Unternehmensgründungen. Lohmar, Germany: EUL-Verlag.

[8.]
Klamma, R., Jarke, M., Rohde, M., et al. 2003. New Approaches to
Media-Supported Project Work at the University Level. In: Proceedings of
ICALT 2003, 3rd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning
Technologies. Athens, Greece: July 9--11, 2003.

[9.] Klamma, R., Rohde, M., Wulf, V.
2004): Making sense of Communities of Practice at the University Level:
Connecting Academia and Industries. In: Proceedings
of Multi-Conference Business Information Systems (MKWI 2004). Essen, Germany:
March 9--11, 2004.

[10.] Lave,
J. and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning
– Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, MA:
University Press.

[11.]
Piaget, J. 1957. Construction of reality in the child. London, UK:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.

[12.] Putnam, 1993. Making Democracy Work. Civil Traditions in
Modern Italy.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[13.] Rohde, M., Jarke, M., Klamma, R., et
al. 2004. Praxisgemeinschaft als didaktische Konzeption: Neue Ansätze
medienunterstützter Projektarbeit in der angewandten Informatik. i-com – Zeitschrift für
interaktive und kooperative Medien 3(3):36--45.

[14.] Rohde, M. 2004. Studentische
Praxisgemeinschaften in der angewandten Informatik. In: Pape, B., Krause, D.,
Oberquelle, H. (eds.): Wissensprojekte.
Gemeinschaftliches Lernen aus didaktischer, softwaretechnischer und
organisatorischer Sicht. Münster, Germany: Waxmann.

[15.] Rohde, M. and Shaffer, D.
2004. We, Ourselves, and Us. This
volume.

[16.] Stahl, G. 2004. Mediation by Group
Cognition. This volume.

[17.] Tajfel, H. 1978. Differentiation
Between Social Groups. Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup
Relations. London, UK: Academic Press.

[18.]
Tajfel, H. 1982. Social Identity and
Intergroup Relations. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press.

[19.]
Turner, J.C., Hogg, M.A., Oakes, P.J., et al. 1987. Rediscovering the Social Group. A Self-categorization Theory. Oxford, UK:
Blackwell.

[20.]
Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice.
Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press.

[21.] Vygotsky, L. S. 1962. Thought
and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Come_IN: Using Computers to Foster the Integration of Migrant Communities

Gunnar Stevens

[email-masked]

Michael Veith

[email-masked]

Volker Wulf

[email-masked]

1. OVERVIEW

Modern western societies are facing the challenges of
immigration and integration. The main criterion for social participation and democratic
collaboration is the successful integration of immigrants. A lack of social as
well as cultural integration, especially among young immigrants, seems to be
the consequence of a low level of education and unequal opportunities. Immigrant
children who are enrolled at primary schools, for instance, show significant
deficits in tests of German language acquisition in comparison to German pupils
on the one hand, and even to other immigrant pupils of their parent’s
generation, on the other.

Moreover, corresponding to this drop of linguistic
competence, the social gap seems to be growing along the so-called digital
divide. Thus, in the last years, several attempts have been initiated to enable
underprivileged social groups to access computers. The concept of Computer
Clubhouses (CCH) is of special interest in this regard.

Motivated by discussion about the concept of the CCHs and
the theoretical learning approach of the Communities of Practice (CoP), the concept
for the intercultural computer club Come_IN has been developed and put into
practice. This year it has been opened officially in “Bonner
Altstadt,” one of the city of Bonn’s
multicultural neighborhoods. Come_IN reframes
the concept of the CCH to fit the German context.

1.1. The Bonner Altstadt Neighborhood

Come_In has been built up in cooperation with St. Marien, a
catholic elementary school in the neighborhood. The school implements the aims,
values and methods of the reform-minded pedagogical learning paradigms of Maria
Montessori. The school is considered exemplary in realizing innovative
pedagogically didactical practice. The curriculum focuses on open- and
work-oriented lessons, e.g. in small groups, workshops, and projects. Each
classroom is equipped with two or three computers that can be used as resources
in the daily work. For more than a decade, pupils are taught in classes with
mixed age-groups. The pupils of the St. Marien School come from very different
social and cultural circumstances. About 35% of all pupils are of Turkish
origin and have been poorly educated. There are a considerable number of other
immigration children as well.

The district where the project takes place has a population
of about 10,000 inhabitants. The social and cultural structure of this district
can be characterized as a colorful mixture of different communities[6].
Today’s situation in the quarter is a result of post-war urban
development. In the 60s and 70s, many better-off inhabitants moved away and the
housing conditions deteriorated. Later, they were replaced by people searching
for new and cheaper accommodation, namely immigrants and students. Some
statistical data characterize this situation today: the quarter has a high rate
of immigrants (22.7% of the population of the district, compared to 12.5% of Bonn’s total
population) and a low education rate (35% have a Hauptschulabschluss[7]
and 32% of those employed are workers).

2. COMPUTER CLUBHOUSE APPROACH

Initiated in 1993, the concept of Computer Clubhouses was
put into practice. In cooperation with the former Computer Museum,
the MIT Media Laboratory opened the first computer club for young participants
coming from a lower-class background with a low level of education. The
pedagogical concept is an extension of the constructivist learning paradigm. In
constructivism, learning is a process of constructing individual cognitive
structures. Papert extends this idea by stating that these cognitive structures
have to be put into practice by constructing artifacts [7]. Thereby, a way is
found to externalize implicit and tacit knowledge. This is called
constructionism [7]. Furthermore, Chapman argues that the artifacts need to be
put into social context [1]. By doing so, they can be shared with and critiqued
by others. Other learners are able to learn from and with the artifacts, while
the constructor learns from those dealing with the artifacts. Shaw enriches this
theory with a socio-cultural aspect indicating that constructional learning is
also social learning [10]. Besides the artifacts themselves, social connections
are built into the process of constructional learning. As a result, social
capital is part of the underlying concept of the CCH. Highly innovative ICT is
used to stimulate the learning process of the target group at short notice. From
a long-term perspective, the CCH tries to provide better access to working life
for the youth [8; 9].

The core principles of the clubhouses are as follows: a) to
support learning through design experiences; b) to help youth to build on their
own interests; c) to cultivate an “emergent community”; and d) to create
an environment of respect and trust [9]. Hayes et al. demonstrate the
difficulties of bringing this espoused model of the CCH into practice [4]. That
team also shows how it collides with the actual needs of its members.

Communities of practice (CoP) are an interesting way of
explaining learning and knowledge acquisition processes [6; 12]. This idea
follows from socio-cultural learning theories, which understand learning as a
collective process. This process is linked to specific contexts of action.
Learning in a CoP is defined by the relationship of groups of old-timers and newcomers that are inside the community. By means of legitimate
peripheral participation, newcomers are confronted with the practice of
old-timers, which built the core of a CoP. This situation has some similarities
to the principle of cultivating an emergent community in the CCH.

As newcomers interact, work, and communicate with old-timers,
their experiences increase. This phenomenon indicates that learning in a CoP is
a process of growing into the community. Furthermore, CoPs are characterized by
common conventions, language, tool usage, values, and standards. A CoP is
inseparable from issues of (individual and social) identity. Identity is mainly
determined by the negotiated experience of one's self in terms of participation
in a community and the learning process concerning one's membership in a CoP [12].

3. INTEGRATION AND THE ROLE OF ICT

The aim of
integration and full participation is difficult to reach if immigrants
stay separated. Particularly in towns and cities where autonomous immigrant
communities are emerging, the problem of isolation can become significant. This
can lead to the condition that both parents and children acquire too little
linguistic and intercultural competency to communicate with members of other
communities.

In the following sections, we will focus on the role of ICT.
Because we deal with social phenomena like integration and communication, the
perspective on this role is more socially oriented than in traditional
approaches. To make our argument easy to follow, we present a broader but
simplified view of ICT to the reader. Of course, such a view does not pay full tribute
to the complexity of the topic:

3.1. Cross Community Building
and Intercultural Learning

From a superficial perspective, the problem described above
is a problem of a lack or a gap in education. So, in a terse manner, the
problem would be easy to solve if computer programs transferred knowledge, and
thus, filled the gap in education. However, considering socio-cultural learning
theories, it seems obvious that the source of the problem lies deeper –
namely on the level of identity. In Germany, over the years Turkish
immigrants developed and stabilized functional and self-organized ethnic
communities, which formed their own identity separated from other communities [3;
11]. These communities have their own traditions, due largely to the fact that their
community parameters (such as cultural and social values and language) are at
most only weakly influenced by the parameters of other communities. For many
within these communities, there seems to be no need to interact with other
communities at all. From our point of view, the main challenge for integrative
work in society is to establish additional identities besides those of the different
ethnic communities. These identities should to be built on shared practices.
While learning by doing, the members of these intercultural CoPs will realize
integration through unintended motivation.

3.2. Participation of Parents in the Learning Process

We assume that the participation of more than one generation
in computer-supported project activities will encourage intercultural
communication. The more generations that are involved in this process, the more
likely it will appear that socio-cultural and linguistic barriers can be
surmounted, as experiences of numerous generations can build up a richer common
identity. Besides that, one specific insight from the practical context of the
primary school St. Marien is that targeting only the children of immigrants. This
obstruction of the learning process is possibly based on the parents’
disinterest in schooling, in both its practical and theoretical classes. There
is a gap in social learning that cannot be solved by increasing the intensity
of only classical schooling. The process of integration has to be considered
integrally, which means that parents (as they are part of the social context)
have to be included. By doing so, socio-cultural learning is fostered. As a
further result, participation allows the parents to benefit from their
children’s learning progress.

3.3. ICT as a Door Opener into the Communities of Immigrants

So far, we mainly discussed the social environment in which
we want to use computers to foster integrative community processes. However, we
did not answer one important question: Why does ICT (for our purposes,
computers) play an important and highly specific role in the process of
integration? To answer this question, we want to explain the role of computers
by drawing an analogy to the implementation of a corresponding development aid[8]
project. The comparison between integration work and development aid is
justified, as both deal with the problem of how a modernization process can be
promoted from the outside of a community.

The underlying purpose of the development aid project was to
teach female Tunisian farmers the capability of western cattle owning and
breeding techniques [2]. But besides the transfer of pure technical knowledge
(know-what and know-how), there was also a focus on the transformation of
identities that were linked to the technology. By doing so, the learning was
supposed to become a sustained progress. Dersch describes the structure of this
transformation as follows:

[It] shows that the transformation
process takes place on two different levels and at different speeds. Modern
technical, economic or institutional innovations are more quickly and easily
adopted by a traditionally oriented culture than are changes in normative
behaviours and social attitudes [2].

The characterizing role of technology in this transformation
process lies in its ability to integrate people from foreign communities into
the process of technical knowledge acquisition. This opens opportunities where a common working practice
- which is related to a specific technology - can be transferred to a
community of practice. In this respect, the concept of the CCH is turned upside
down: The existence of a community is not
necessarily obligatory to start learning processes. Rather it is the other way
round. The motivation to acquire technical skills can be used to set cross
community processes in motion. However, community building is a social
process, so it is not guaranteed that a common interest in technology will lead
to a community of practice. But, we believe that the learning process will be
sustained if the transformation from common practice to a community of practice
succeeds.

When we transfer this insight to the concept of come_IN we can show that ICT can fulfill
the role of an attractor or motivator for participation. Motivation to learn
about computers functions as some sort of entrance card or an impetus for the integrative
transformation processes.

3.4. The Come_IN Project

Based on the considerations presented above, we developed
the concept of an innovative computer club. In cooperation with the elementary
school it became possible to put this concept into practice. In addition, by
examining the workings of the club we were able to get first insights into its
potential.

After a preparation period of 18 months, the Come_IN
computer club was opened officially in March 2004. Since its opening, it has
been running each Wednesday from 5pm
to 7pm. The intended target
groups show strong interest and active participation in the club. The
successful start of the club is mainly based on the work of several volunteers
from the district. With the help of several donations it became possible to
obtain initial hardware and software equipment. Again, the support for the
project groups is mainly provided by volunteers from the quarter.

3.5. Children Together with Parents

Education is not only a public
affair. Parents have to care about the education of their children, as well. Schools
and parents should work together to promote the learning of their children [5].
Improving this cooperation and integrating parents into the schoolwork of their
children was one of the major reasons the elementary school was interested in
participating in this project.

Thus, as a rule, a child may only come to the club if
accompanied by at least one of her parents. This regulation ensures the
inclusion of parents with the learning process of their children. Children
learn from parents and vice versa. In addition, it is hard for elementary
school kids to manage complex projects themselves. So, opportunities are given
to the parents to realize their own ideas. Foreign and German parents
communicate with each other. Again, the computer plays an important role in
this process as it builds the fundament of shared practice in the club
community. Especially in the Turkish community, it is seen as an opportunity to
achieve (further) social success.

3.6. Working on Projects

Current topics, latest news and daily problems influence the
establishment of new projects. Relevant topics are put into local and regional
contexts to provide a platform for a multicultural dialog. Mainly
socio-cultural and ecological questions that influence the pupils’
everyday life and their experiences are discussed. As a first project focus in Come_IN, a multi-media documentation of a
multicultural family history of the quarter is set up. Right now, the third
generation of Turkish immigrants lives in the district, which emphasizes the
motivation for this project. The goal is the creation of a shared multicultural
history. Especially the first generations of immigrants, who came to Germany
as guest workers and have collected a lot of experiences, have local interests
that have not yet been documented at all. This German-Turkish history shall be
set into contrast with the German family histories in the district. So, the
project will help to create a common practice that has a shared history. Such a
shared history may support the growth of a shared identity across the different
communities. Naturally, success can only be achieved by involving all
generations and all ethnic communities. The result of the project will be a
collection of multi-media materials that will be the common ground for further
exhibitions.

Learning in this context does not appear in a behaviorist
manner, but more likely through a process of constructing. Supported by
computers, all participants in the project get the opportunity to search for
historical and social sources within their personal context. Others may learn
from the resulting artifacts. Based on an emergent common identity, it is
possible to reduce prejudices (yet, we assume that this already happens during
the process of constructing). As a result, integration in this context is not a
social utopia but the product of common and shared practice that includes
respect and comprehension.

3.7. Playful Acquisition of Computer and Media Skills and Competences

By the playful computer-supported acquisition of media
competences, participants learn how to work practically with innovative tools
in a natural manner. This naturalness will allow both the children and their
parents to master new challenges more easily. It provides occupational chances
for the children in the future whereas parents may achieve further social
development and participation in their social life. Furthermore, children get
the chance to explore their own interests. They will externalize these
interests by constructing multi-media artifacts, which again may help others in
their own learning process. Intercultural barriers will be surmounted. This
effect, plus the attraction of computers and new media, will safeguard the
survival and further success of the computer club.

4. THE FUTURE

Actually, the current state of Come_IN must be seen as a
success. One indicator for that is the high rate of participation from the
German and the Turkish community. But, for a deeper and more precise evaluation
it is still too early. We will examine the future progress of the club with the
help of ethnographical studies over a longer period. The results will be the
basis for the further development of the concepts. With regard to the common
practice within the club, an evaluation will have to deal with the following
issues:

(1)     What
role does computer-supported project work play in regard to social networking,
intercultural communication and identity building within the quarter? What are
the underlying mechanisms of computer-supported project work? What impacts do
specific features of the concept have for the common practice, such as learning
across different generations?

(2)     How
will the different members of the club acquire computer skills? What are the
requirements for appropriate computer applications and what type of technical
innovations are necessary?

(3)     How
will linguistic as well as computer competencies of the participants interfere
with each other?

(4)     Which
local and regional criteria influence the establishment of an intercultural
computer club? Which preconditions have to be fulfilled in order to increase the chance of long-term success?

5. REFERENCES

[1.] Chapman, R. (2004): Pearls of
Wisdom: Social Capital Building
in Informal Learning Environments. In: Huysman, M. & Wulf, V. (eds.). Social Capital and Information Technology.
Cambridge, London: MIT Press, pp. 301-331.

[2.]
Dersch, D. 1997. Transformation und Autonomi im Leben Tunesischer
Bäuerinnen. Eine Struktural=hermeneutische Analyse eines
Beratungsprojekts. Weikersheim,
Germany:
Margraf Verlag.

[3.] Esser,
H. 1996. Ethnische Konflikte als Auseinandersetzung um den Wert von Kulturellen
Kapital. In: Die Bedrängte Toleranz.
Ethnisch-kulturelle Konflikte, Religiöse Differenzen und die Gefahren
Politisierter Gewalt. Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp.

[4.] Hayes, G.R., Bevis, K.J., and
Amar, R.A. 2004. The Clubhouse Revisited.
Georgia Institute of Technology. GVU Technology Report 04-13. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/home/kbevis/ClubhouseV1-6.pdf.

[5.]
Lanfranchi, A. Gruber, J. and Gay, D. 2001. Schulerfolg bei Migrationskindern
dank Transitorischer Räume im Vorschulbereich. In: Sammelband des NFP 39 Migration (Hrg.). Zurich, Germany:
Seismo Verlag.

[6.] Lave, J., and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. London, UK: Cambridge
University Press.

[7.] Papert, S. 1980. Mindstorms. New York, NY:
Basic Books.

[8.] Resnick, M., and Rusk, N. 1996.
Access is not Enough. The American
Prospect 27:60-68.

[9.] Resnick, M., and Rusk, N. 1996.
The Computer Clubhouse: Preparing for Life in a Digital World. IBM Systems Journal, 35.

[10.] Shaw, A. 1995. Social Constructionism and the Inner City. PhD
Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy.

[11.]
Unbehaun, H., Straβburger,
G., and Yalcin-Heckmann, L. 1997. Die Türkischen Kolonien in Bamberg und Colmar
– Ein Deutsch-Französischer Vergleich Sozialer Netzwerke von
Migranten im Interkulturellen Kontext. Bamberg, Germany:
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg.

[12.] Wenger, E. 1998. Communities
of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. London,
UK: Cambridge University
Press.

Part III. Computer Support

Student Communities in a Distance-Learning
Environment

Thierry Isckia

Institut
National des Télécommunications

9 rue Charles
Fourier, 91011 Evry Cedex, France

[email-masked]

Charles Delalonde

France Télécom
R&D

BP98, 38243
Meylan Cedex, France

[email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

Distance Education (DE) is becoming increasingly important
as its rapid growth rates demonstrate. However, recent statistics on DE show
low retention rates and a poor return on investment (ROI) in various programs. We
need a better understanding of what are the critical success factors for DE
environments for all constituencies (students, instructors, and institutions).
We still misinterpret the reality of this kind of practice, both from the
teacher’s and the learner’s point of view [1]. In this article, we
focus on the collective dimension of the learning environments. In fact,
entering a virtual learning community appears as a rational choice for the
students to retrieve information more rapidly [3] and examine with available
peers the actual content. But, students occasionally express a natural anxiety
about sharing their difficulties with strangers, which partially explains the
barriers in establishing trusting and caring learning communities [2].
Well-sequenced pedagogical courses and frequent contacts with the professor
seem to strengthen the cohesion and integration of the students in a group.
Consequently, educational choices and the global architecture of the course, by
influencing the formation of these groups, try to compensate — at least
partially — for the deficiencies of DE. The goal of this paper is to
propose solutions to overcome low retention rates and ROI in order to deploy an
efficient DE program using the key solution of a web-based course in an American
public university.

2. METHODOLOGY

To collect the data for this study, we interviewed students
enrolled in an introductory MIS course taught exclusively online. Each
semester, over 1200 students register for this 16-week course. They learn about
management of information systems and Microsoft Excel. The students were placed
in sub-groups of 30 members to recreate a classroom environment and facilitate
emerging learning communities. The professor enforced strict rules with regard
to this course, including assignment posting in discussion groups every other
week and numerous Excel / MIS exams. To reduce student requests, a "three before me" rule was
established: to question the professor, students must have first tried to get
answers for their question in three other ways (syllabus of the course,
discussion group, chat with a peer).

3. OBSERVATIONS

3.1. Group Discussions are not Utilized Effectively

Discussions groups have not been utilized effectively. Each
sub-group had its own discussion group (discussion
group 1,2,…,40). Students had to post answers to their assignments in
this location. Access to these forums was restricted to the 30 members.
Additional forums were made public by the professor including:

Main - a
one-way forum utilized by the
professor to give announcements and information to the whole student body
at once,

Excel Issues -
a forum utilized to post questions regarding Excel assignments.

Technical
Support - a forum utilized to post questions regarding any technical
problem encountered during the course.

The group discussions, the most adequate place to develop a
sense of community, were not utilized. The only messages posted in these forums
were replies to assignments. These groups were rarely used to ask questions to
other students. As Celina mentioned: "There
really was no posting in our group as
far as problems: there is only one posting."

Most of the messages posted in the sub-group discussions
were assignments or forced replies to other students. When they needed to ask
questions students used the Technical issues and Excel support discussion
groups. Consequently, the discussions on these two forums were not focusing on
Excel or Technical Issues, but on any problem that the students might have
encountered (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Examples
of subjects discussed in online forums.

3.2. Redundant Messages

Messages posted in the discussion groups were simple and
could be easily answered by the students themselves if they would read the
content of other members' postings. Messages posted in the discussion groups
and interviews clearly demonstrate aggravation from students whom have read the
content provided in the course. Yet, the worst aspect of these redundant
messages was the confusion they created for certain students. Paula argued in
the Excel issue discussion group: "It is frustrating to hear the same
questions over and over. I wonder though if there is confusion on this one
because the course reminder keeps showing ‘News’ with subtitle ‘one
quiz must be submitted soon’, even after exam one is taken?”

Instructions and answers for this question could be easily
found by the students on the course pages, but the number of redundant messages
triggered confusion. Learners did not realize that posting a message without
reading others was rude and is comparable to asking the same question over and
over in a traditional classroom setting. In a traditional educational
situation, this would not be tolerated. It is an accepted part of floundering
online communities, as it was in the case of our course. In fact, prior
research has indicated: "norms that lead to good online etiquette are a
stepping-stone to social capital" [4]. Consequently, students lost
confidence in the question/answer system that was not providing them with the
desired response. Questions accumulated in the technical and Excel question
forums and discussion groups.

3.3. Absence of Community

The lack of community and trust was evident during
interviews. Students did not utilize the help from others in their ISM groups.
They chose to go out of the course to find peer support (friends, co-workers).
In fact, they were reluctant to interact with the professor following
guidelines (three before me rule), and did not want to post in the intimidating
large discussion groups. One student actually mentioned: "basically, I know one thing this class
taught us is how to network ".
To succeed in this course, learners had to organise themselves in study groups:
"Every Friday, we meet up in the
Magruder lab, and we start to go over the Excel and Assignment"
(Lucetta L.).

4. ANALYSES

Discussion participation and student interviews clearly
indicate the necessity to update our pedagogical method. We ought to find in
existing online communities technical and organizational solutions. In this
part we are going to consider the concept of learning communities from an
examination of best practices. At first sight and from a purely structural
point of view, the pedagogical approach that we observed at UCF is similar to
that of a learning community. To be precise on this point, we can say that in a
"community of practice" partnership refers to tacit knowledge
combined with considered practices and associated with purely professional
problem-solving activities. On the contrary, in a "learning community" exchanges among members revolve around
explicit knowledge that is restricted constantly in a given domain. These are
exactly the objectives of the community we studied. It is designed to learn
about Excel and to construct operational knowledge associated with this tool.
But before going any further let us observe the elements which make up a
learning community.

When a group of people has become a community they display a
caring attitude with regard to each other [4]. Here, it is useful to mention
that this type of behavior does not appear so much on the forum as in the
direct exchanges between the students. The students who attend the classes are
required by the teaching module to ask two questions in the forum and likewise
to respond to two of the questions asked by their fellow students. If the
purpose of this requirement is to prime the pump and launch discussion, it has
a perverse effect in regard to group dynamics and the underlying learning
processes. In effect, if the rules are to ask and respond to two questions, why
go any further? In fact, the teaching module requirements obliterate the
learning dynamics at the heart of the community. An analysis of the exchanges
on the forum do not exhibit features of co-operation or caring, which are
considered to be essential characteristics of learning communities, except in a
watered down, artificial manner.

The most significant point about this was revealed during
student interviews where many of them explained that they had arranged to meet
frequently and regularly both on and off campus. For example, those who lived
far from the university would plan to meet in the local public library to
discuss their difficulties, find solutions to their problems and help out other
members of the group. Others told us that they regularly asked their friends or
members of their family more familiar with Excel to find answers to their
questions and then shared the information with other members of the group. In
other words, the "community" was created outside the established learning
module tools because these were considered too inflexible.

Members of these groups also told us that they had preferred
to stay in touch and exchange information using their own electronic
communication tools. Therefore, it seems that communities were created outside
of the learning module and without utilizing the communication tools provided.
In our opinion this phenomenon illustrates the difficulties of managing
interactions "mechanically" between members of a community. It seems
that to impose too rigid a regulatory model on a learning community will dash
any nascent spontaneity.

This is related to the more general question concerning the
directing or managing of communities and the associated pedagogical
"devices." On this point, and more specifically concerning
communities of practice, Wenger says, "Just
because communities of practice arise naturally does not mean that
organizations can't do anything to influence their development" [6]. Guérin
comments on this saying that, "Wenger's
argument is itself potentially contradictory, in wanting to preside over the
fate of a spontaneous phenomenon" [5]. We can represent the
pedagogical implication in a learning community by a triangle whose points
represent respectively, the community (the group), the learner (a student), and
the person who facilitates the encounter between the subject to be learned, the
student and the group (a teacher). The subject to be learned sits at the center
of the triangle. We noticed little communication both within and between
groups, and that the students rarely interrogated the tutor (respecting the
rule of "three before me"). In the end, we observed a rearrangement
of the pedagogical structure and its technological tools outside the formal
framework of the institution. This is indicated in our schema by the dotted
lines connecting the learners with their peers (friends, family, etc.), who
replace the original tutor or professor (Figure 2). The rearrangement of the
central, social links of the learning community results in the emergence of ad
hoc groups at the heart of the community from the very beginning and, in
addition, the perimeter of these groups

rarely coincides with the form initially envisaged by the teaching module.

Figure 2: Schema of the rearrangement of the pedagogical structure.

5. RECOMMENDATIONS

The pedagogical organization of this course is
deterministic. Spontaneous student activities were difficult to express. The
students did not have the right virtual environment to meet using the technical
tools provided. Clearly, the structure of the course, the strict guidelines
students had to follow and the heterogeneity of the student body prevented
learning communities from emerging. We recommend a better organization of our
discussion groups to take advantage of our diverse student body.

At the beginning of the semester, students had to complete a
practice quiz to access the first module. This first evaluation should be used
to assess the level of our students. Instead of asking twelve similar
questions, we suggested ten website related questions, ten MIS related
questions, and ten Excel related questions. This test should be administered in
the “add and drop” period. The result of this test would help us
better segment students in categories: regular users and power users. The
number of power users should be divided by the number of groups. Then these
power users should be placed equally in each sub-group. The rest of the
students should be added in the various discussion groups. This recommendation
relies on the belief that caring among users is necessary and
"contagious" [4]. We believe that students, if provided with the
correct incentives, will help and care for each other.

After grading the pre-test, we identified the power users.
Part of the grading for this course included posting MIS related responses and
replies to two other students. The power users could then be offered the
following trade: instead of participating in the discussion groups by
responding to other students, they had to help others in their group to provide
technical answers. At the end of the semester, if the other students
participate in the discussion groups, the power user will be rewarded
accordingly. We believe that certain behavior is contagious: the fact of seeing
power users help other students will cause learners to be inclined to
participate and help their peers.

This proposition suggested that the two discussion groups
(Excel Issues and Technical Issues) be disabled. In effect, we wanted to
concentrate the discussions/questions that might arise from students to their
individual discussion groups only. This should tentatively help us to avoid the
propagation of unnecessary messages in public discussion groups. Yet, we might
observe similar questions within different discussion groups. We enjoyed in the
past when students replied to other’s questions in the "largest
audience" discussion group, i.e.,
Technical Issues or Excel Support. In this new organization,
if the professor realizes that it is necessary to inform the entire classroom
of an issue, he will use the main discussion group (a one-way discussion group
where only the professor can post messages – student's messages are
automatically discarded). This relies on the idea that community enhances
students’ experiences and learning. In addition, we believe that a
smaller student group and the participation of power users will provide a
fertile environment for emerging communities.

5.1. Various Recommendations

5.1.1. Ice-Breaker mandatory

We suggest including a simple ice-breaker where students can
introduce themselves: Major/Birthplace/Hobbies. Obviously, this short message
has to be restricted to the group place.

5.1.2. Explicit title

The postings from the students on the discussion groups
should be very explicit. In fact, we cannot force it, but, we might propose
that discussions without a clear title should not expect an answer. Explicit
titles would be presented at the beginning of the semester including [EXCEL]
for an Excel related question or [TECH] for a Tech related question. Assignments
should also be titled properly such as [ASSIGNMENT].

5.1.3. Contextual help files

The professor suggested that we should create a
"hyperlinked" Web page that would send the user directly to the
associated “help files.” This technological enhancement provided to
the user must have with it restrictions on redundant postings, perhaps by
taking points off grades for infractions. For instance, if a student asks a
question on the discussion group that has already been asked in the past he
loses points. Students will then think twice before carelessly questioning
their peers. The help files should also be developed using drop-down menus and
presented separating the content: Excel help, MIS help, etc. The help files
should be numbered. In fact, we want power students to refer to these files by
number (after a question from the student, the Power User might propose to look
at help file # 24). The help files will be designed using the most frequently
asked questions from previous semesters. A voting system will have to be
implemented at the end of the help file to find out if the help file helped the
student or not. The top three could be posted in the Home Page or in the Main
discussion group.

6. CONCLUSION

The entire E-learning or DE project placed the student in
the middle of the learning experience, and aimed to horizontalize knowledge transfer (student-to-student rather than
professor-to-student), involving the student in his learning experience. Yet,
results are not satisfying and students are progressively loosing confidence in
this pedagogical concept. After observing and interviewing students from an
online web-based course we realized the importance of caring learning
communities in knowledge creation. We recommend segmenting students according
to their level and give various guidelines to correctly administer large online
classrooms.

7. REFERENCES

[1.] Lagrange, J.-B. and Grugeon, B.
2003. Vers une prise en compte de la
complexité de l'usage des TIC dans l'enseignement. Revue française de pédagogie
143: 101--111.

[2.] Foucault, B., Metzger, J.-L., et al. 2003. Les réseaux
d'entraide entre apprenants dans la e-formation: nécessité et
efficacité ? Education Permanente
152:95--106.

[3.] Metzger, J.-L. 2003. La formation à distance entre dynamique
des collectifs et articulation des temps sociaux. France Télécom Recherche & Développement,
n° RP/FTR&D/8326 novembre.

[4.]
Preece, J. 2004. Etiquette, empathy and trust in communities of practice :
Stepping-stones to social capital. Journal
of Universal Computer Science (in press).

[5.] Guérin, F. 2004. Le concept de
communauté : une illustration exemplaire de la production de concepts en
sciences sociales? 13ème
Conférence Internationale de Management Stratégique
(AIMS), 1 au 4 juin.

[6.] Wenger. E., McDermott. R., and Snyder, W. 2002. Cultivating
Communities of Practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Business School.

Building Learning Communities by
Enhancing Social Presence:  Implementing
Blended Instructional Delivery Methods

Woei Hung

University
of Arizona South

[email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

Lewis, Snow,
Farris, et al. stated in the National
Center for Education
Statistics that “distance education appears to have become a common
feature of many postsecondary education institutions and…it will become
only more common in the future” [3]. In the wave of migration to new
instructional delivery modes, it is necessary for us to critically examine some
issues that have arisen, in order to reach an optimal solution for both the
students and the instructors. One of the inevitable tradeoffs in an online
learning environment is a decrease in the quality of social interaction. Social
interaction is innate in traditional face-to-face classrooms. It is not only a
critical element in helping the learners to develop a sense of belongingness
within a learning community, but also determines the dynamics of the learning
community, which greatly influence the students’ learning outcomes. Among
the essential components of a community, interaction between the members is
deemed to be the one crucial factor that makes a community alive. Researchers
agree that helping students
develop a sense of community is an important aspect in promoting
positive learning experiences and better learning outcomes in distance learning
environments [7].

The decreased quality of social interaction in online
learning environments is usually attributed to the decreased degree of social
presence. Social presence is defined as “the degree of awareness of
another person in an interaction and the consequent appreciation of an
interpersonal relationship” [9]. Short, Williams, and Christie argued
that social presence is essential in person-to-person communication [6]. As the
degree of social presence declines, the communication is perceived as more
impersonal. According to Argyle and Dean [1] and Wiener and Mehrabian [11], the
two components of social presence are intimacy and immediacy. Intimacy refers
to physical proximity, visual cues (such as eye contact, body language), and
topic of communication. Immediacy regards the psychological distance that is
set by the signaler to the receiver in an event of communication. Immediacy
could be verbal and nonverbal, such as physical proximity, facial expressions,
formality of dress, or body language.

A factor that contributes to determining the degree of
intimacy and immediacy is information richness. Daft and Lengel [2] described
information richness as the capability of information to alter or clarify
understanding within a given timeframe. Information richness is usually used to
classify media’s capacity to deliver intimacy and immediacy. In terms of
degree of information richness, face-to-face is the richest medium for
communication, and impersonal written documents contain low degrees of
information richness [10]. Face-to-face communication affords the richest
information for the receiver to determine the degree of social presence. The
reason for that is not only because of the face-to-face medium’s
capability to provide immediate feedback or the visual cues that the signaler
exhibits, but also because of the ambient cues from the environment. That the
two physical and psychological measures - intimacy and immediacy - share a
common indicator of physical proximity also provides a theoretical explanation
for the high degree of social presence in face-to-face communication.

Present formats of classrooms can be roughly divided into
two main categories: traditional face-to-face settings and online courses. In
the order of degree of information richness, online courses can be further
classified as (1) with videoconferencing capability, (2) with audioconferencing
capability, (3) with synchronous chat room capability, (4) with asynchronous
discussion board capability, and (5) instruction and content display only.
Whiteman [10] suggested that information-rich media facilitates communication
by increasing opportunities for overcoming different frames of reference
possessed by the members of the communication event. Also, the higher capacity
for processing and decoding complex, subjective messages in information-rich
media helps an individual more easily interpret the psychological aspect of the
message. Therefore, the face-to-face classroom setting is the most ideal media
for affording optimal social presence because of its capability of providing
full-scale intimacy and immediacy. Online classroom settings could provide
various degrees of social presence depending upon their capability for
information richness.

As mentioned earlier, social presence is a critical factor
that affects the quality of social interaction within a group, and consequently
influences the dynamics of the group. Creating a learning environment with a
high level of social presence not only benefits the learners’ need for social
interaction, but also provides opportunities for collaborative learning.
Collaborative learning enhances learning by providing the learners with
multiple perspectives on the issues under study from each of the members in the
learning community and promotes active engagement in the learning processes
[5]. Moreover, collaboration is a core component in the establishment of a
learning community. The learners’ development of a sense of learning
community will be greatly influenced by their perception of the social presence
of other members.

With respect to the low social presence of online learning
environments, there is a call for an effort to create a “human touch of
attentiveness to their students” in distance learning [8], and facilitate
online learning experiences that more closely resemble traditionally accepted
practices [4] when implementing online courses. The low social presence in
online learning environments creates an invisible obstacle that hinders the
development of a sense of a learning community among the online learners and,
in turn, sometimes decreases the learners’ desire to take online courses
or undermines their learning outcomes. Thus, the question of how to increase
the two major components of social presence: intimacy and immediacy, is an
important issue in distance education research [9].

2. THE CASE

The University of Arizona South is a branch campus of the University of Arizona,
located in Sierra Vista, southeast of Tucson. In response to the
demand of serving a large population of students from rural areas, and the
difficulty students have in traveling long distances to attend classes, the
university implements a “small scale multiple satellite campuses
model.” This model turns traditional schooling around so that instead of
the students traveling from all over southeastern Arizona
to the headquarter campus, the same courses are offered in multiple locations
throughout southeastern Arizona.
The students can choose to attend the classes held on a campus that is close to
their homes or workplaces. This model capitalizes on the students’
willingness to take classes from the university, and therefore, promotes
enrollment. However, this model is a double-edged sword: offering multiple
sections of a course in multiple locations can reach and serve a larger student
population (particularly in rural areas), yet, at the same time, this practice
increases the number of instructors needed to teach at the different locations,
which increases the financial burden of the university with costs such as
salaries and travel funds.

In order to solve this dilemma and still keep our promise to
provide equal quality education opportunities to our students, we have
developed a blended instructional delivery method to satisfy the
students’ needs and to balance the cost of offering courses at multiple
locations. The blended instructional delivery method we use is a combination of
in-class and virtual class meetings. Instead of employing multiple instructors
or an instructor who teaches at different locations at different times for one
course, the course is taught by one instructor with multiple sections. The
multiple sections of this course take place at the same time but at different
locations. The instructor is on one campus leading class sessions with students
in a computer lab, other students are in a computer lab on another campus, and
still other students participate from their offices or homes. All students are
equipped with the necessary hardware and are able to run a videoconferencing
system via a high-speed Internet connection. All students may choose to
physically attend class (either on the site where the instructor is or at the
site where only the students are attending), or to participate in the class
virtually from their homes or offices.

The main rationale for choosing and implementing this method
of instructional delivery is to optimize the students’ learning outcomes
and experiences by finding a balance between the quality of students’
learning communities and the limitations of the university. Developing and
delivering instruction totally online is an easier solution. However, enhancing
the quality of learning is more important than seeking a convenient solution.
In this case, helping students develop a sense of a learning community in
online learning environments by promoting the quality of social interaction is
our focus for reaching the goal. Social presence is a critical factor in
determining the quality of social interaction. In this case, under the
practical considerations and limitations that we have, the blended instruction
delivery method provides a viable solution to solving administration problems,
and at the same time, maintains maximum quality of education for the students.
In the order of intimacy and immediacy, the degree of social presence in these
three types of classroom settings in the blended instruction delivery method
is: (1) the classroom with the presence of the instructor and the students, (2)
the classroom with the students only, and (3) virtually participating in class.
The first setting, without doubt, provides the maximum quality of social
interaction. The second setting is a compromised solution that provides less
than perfect quality of social interaction for the students. The third setting,
participating in classes virtually from home or the workplace, provides the
students who are not able to physically attend any of the classrooms due to
geographical or time restraints with the opportunity to take the class.

The two physical class meeting sites are two computer labs
on two campuses. In these two computer labs, each workstation is equipped with
BITS synchronous online collaboration software, a set of headsets with a
microphone, a webcam, and a T1 connection. The BITS collaboration system has
the functions of text-based chat, videoconferencing, application sharing, and
messenger. The students who choose to participate in the virtual class meeting
have to install the BITS system and the necessary hardware themselves. The BITS
system requires a broadband Internet connection due to the high bandwidth
demand for conducting a videoconference during the class sessions. Because this
blended instructional delivery method was implemented in our program for the
first time this year, we were interested in what impact the technology imposes
on the students’ learning in terms of building a learning community as
well as individual learning. We were particularly interested in how this
blended learning environment (face-to-face plus semi-face-to-face plus totally
virtual,) affects (1) their interest and motivation to learn and participate in
the class, and their perception of the interaction with the instructor and
other students (physically present or virtually present), (2) the degree to
which social presence affects students’ interest and learning outcomes,
given that students choose whether or not to participate virtually.

Based on informal observations of the students’
attendance and interactions both online and in the classroom throughout a
semester, and interviews with the students, we found the blended instruction
delivery method to be an effective means for enhancing social interaction among
students. The following describes what we learned from the implementation of
this class.

Our observations confirmed that the degree of social
presence is a critical factor for increasing the quality of social interaction.
Given the choice of participating in the classes by having to come to the
meeting sites or by meeting with the class virtually from home or a workplace,
a majority of the students chose to come to the meeting sites, either with or
without the instructor’s presence. This indicated that intimacy and
immediacy do play an important role in formulating a more accepted mode of
social interaction. Videoconferences could provide the learners with more
face-to-face intimacy and immediacy, however, the lack of ambient environmental
information in the videoconferencing environment degrades the learners’
(both signalers and receivers) perceptions of social presence due to its limited
affordability of information richness. In the need to seek psychological and
social support from the learning community, the students felt that forming a
real-life learning community was more important than their own convenience.

One tradeoff of the blended instruction delivery method was
that the degree of social interaction in the classroom decreased compared to
face-to-face classroom instructional delivery due to the physical setting of
computer labs and the format of interaction. Even though the students were
present in the same physical location with or without the presence of the
instructor, the class sessions proceeded in a form of terminal-to-terminal
communication, rather than face-to-face. This could have resulted from two
factors: the setting of the computer lab or the students’ adaptation to
this new instructional delivery method. The physical arrangement of the labs
had the computer terminals arranged in straight rows with the monitors on top
of the desks. Furthermore, because this blended instructional delivery method
was implemented in our program for the first time, both students and the
instructor were probably still habituated to the typical online class mode. The
main classroom interaction among the students and the instructor leaned more
toward a typical online classroom; that is, communicating through computers
instead of face-to-face (even when they were physically present in the same
location). Yet, some face-to-face interaction was observed. For example, the
students would seek clarification about unclear points or concepts directly
(face-to-face communication) from their fellow students who were in the same
computer lab. This type of communication was seen less between the students and
the instructor. There might have been a psychological barrier that the students
(and perhaps the instructor as well) unconsciously imposed upon themselves. The
students and the instructor might have failed to seek alternatives and limited
themselves to thinking that because the class session was proceeding on the
computer and everyone was sitting in front of a computer, all communication
should be via the computer interface. As a result, they may have overlooked the
higher degree of social presence that was available to them and did not take
advantage of it.

One of the advantages of the blended instructional delivery
method over a complete online delivery method is the minimum number of
technical skills required of the students. The physical meeting sites eliminate
the demands on students who are unable to deal with technical issues, such as
installing necessary software, setting up headsets and cameras, calibrating
audio and video settings in the program, as well as unexpected technical
problems. An online course that utilizes audio/videoconferencing meeting modes requires
that learners possess a certain degree of technical knowledge and an ability to
troubleshoot. The fact is that not every student is technologically capable.
Most importantly, the focus of the class should be on learning the subject
matter, rather than on training the learners how to use the technology.
Therefore, the technology should be transparent enough so that the learners can
devote all their energy to learning the subject. The blended instructional
delivery method provides the students with facilities equipped with
ready-to-use technology and on site technical support staff. This way, the
students do not have to deal with the hardware and software issues, and are
able to concentrate on their learning.

An observation we had throughout the semester was that the
students turned off the video windows after only a few weeks of the class. One
interpretation for this phenomenon is the immaturity of the technology, which
hindered the communication, and as a result, undermined the students’ desire
for obtaining higher degrees of social presence. Even though each
student’s Internet connection was at the speed of a T1 or DSL, the
transmission of video was not smooth and sometimes slowed down the interactions
in other modes of communication, such as audio or application sharing. The
capability of technology noticeably decreased the students’ willingness
to use the video function during the class. Until this problem can be solved,
synchronous online classes will still remain primarily based on text and audio
communication. In terms of providing high degrees of social presence in online
learning environments, there is still a great deal of room for improvement.

The blended instructional delivery method appears to be a
promising method that will provide students with an optimal learning
environment under constraints that many institutions and students are facing.
Building a learning community is not only important in traditional face-to-face
classroom settings, but also crucial for online learning environments since the
social presence is inherently low in these settings. The blended instruction
delivery method is a method that takes the advantage of both face-to-face and
online classroom settings, and provides a viable solution to various dilemmas.
The intention we had in utilizing the blended instructional delivery method was
to seek the best possible medium for students’ needs, as well as the
institution’s resource management needs, rather than to make a claim for
the superiority of blended instruction. This report is the result of a
preliminary observation of the implementation of a blended instructional
delivery method in graduate courses. More research is needed to systematically
evaluate the method and provide more insights for educators.

3. REFERENCES

[1.] Argyle,
M., and Dean, J. 1965. Eye Contact, Distance, and Affiliation. Sociometry
28(3):289--304.

[2.] Daft, R. L., and Lengel, R. H.
1986. Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural
design. Management Science, 32(5),
554-571.

[3.] Lewis,
L., Snow, K., Farris, E., et al. 1999. Distance Education at Postsecondary
Education Institutions. U.S.
Department of Education, National
Center for Education
Statistics.

[4.] Meyen, E. Tangen, P., and Lian, C.
1999. Developing Online Instruction: Partnership Between Instructor and
Technical Developers. Journal of Special Education Technology 14(1):18--31.

[5.] Meyers, C., and Jones, T. B. 1993.
Promoting Active Learning. San
Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass Publishers.

[6.] Short,
J. A. E., Williams, E., and Christie, B. 1976. The Social Psychology of
Telecommunications. London,
UK: Wiley
Publishers.

[7.] Stepich,
D. and Ertmer, P. 2003. Building Community as a Critical Element of Online
Course Design. Educational Technology 43(5):33--43.

[8.] Teaching
at an Internet Distance: The Pedagogy of Online Teaching and Learning. 1999.
Unpublished manuscript, University
of Illinois. Retrieved
from: http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/reports_retreats/tid.asp?bch=0.

[9.] Tu, C. –H., and McIsaac, M.
2002. The Relationship of Social Presence and Interaction in Online Classes. The
American Journal of Distance Education 16(3):131--150.

[10.] Whiteman, J. A. 2002. Interpersonal Communication in Computer
Mediated Learning. ERIC Document Reproduction Service, No. ED 465 977.

[11.] Wiener, M., and Mehrabian, A.
1968. Language Within Language: Immediacy, a Channel in Verbal Communication.
New York, NY:
Appleton-Century-Crofts.

The Hook-ups Initiative: How Youth can
Learn by Creating their own Computer Interfaces and Programs

Amon Millner

MIT Media Lab

[email-masked]

1. Introduction

This paper introduces
the Hook-ups initiative. In this initiative, young people learn by designing
and constructing “Hook-ups” - physical objects that can control
games, animations, and other computer programs which they create. Hook-ups can
be inspired by traditional computer interfaces (e.g., joysticks) or are
entirely new types of interfaces (e.g., a spaceship steering wheel). In
creating Hook-ups, young people work with objects and materials that they have
a strong interest in exploring. Youth become designers capable of
integrating virtual media with materials from the world around them. By
engaging in Hook-ups design processes, learners gain confidence and motivation
to explore topics within areas such as interface design, programming, and
physics.

This investigation draws primarily from research focused on
learning through design. Specifically, it addresses the integration of physical
and virtual design. There are four main ideas on which the Hook-ups initiative
is based: (1) design is a good context for learning; (2) learners become more
deeply engaged when they have personal connections to design materials; (3)
design activities should take learners’ individual styles into account;
and (4) supporting design-based learning in environments with less structure
than traditional schools is challenging yet possible.

This paper begins with the relevant theory and work that
guides Hook-ups’ development, followed by a description of the
project’s design, which includes details of current Hook-ups materials
and activities. Scenarios of Hook-ups being created are then offered. Different
approaches to introducing Hook-ups to youth are analyzed. The paper concludes
by discussing the initiative’s future directions.

2. THEoretical Groundings: Learning Through Design

The constructionist theory of learning suggests that young
people learn best through the process of constructing artifacts [3].
Kafai’s Game Design Project is an example of a learning environment
guided by this idea [2]. Kafai created an environment where fourth-grade
students created video games to help younger children learn about fractions.
Her game design tasks ranged from creating game packaging to designing user
interfaces [2]. The Hook-ups initiative extends Kafai’s work into the
domain of input device design. Additionally, the Hook-ups initiative focuses,
beyond game design, on other contexts such as interactive art.

Unlike Kafai’s Game Design Project, Hook-ups
activities do not start from a pre-defined subject matter. Hook-ups project
subject matter is typically the result of free exploration. For instance, a
learner can start a project by modeling the physical behavior of a familiar
item in a simulation or game - buttons on a toy steering wheel can be connected
to a computer to control virtual racecar programs, for example. As learners
progress through their projects, they explore concepts in physics, electronics,
and programming in order to realize their interface design ideas.

2.1. Integrating Physical and Digital

Recent research
initiatives have provided preliminary indications that integrating both
physical and computational design can offer engaging educational experiences to
diverse sets of learners [1; 4]. Programmable Bricks, an initiative
started at the MIT Media Lab, adds computation to physical objects that many
people are familiar with: LEGO bricks. Programmable brick researchers believe
that young people learn powerful ideas through participating in engaging design
experiences both on and off the computer. Commercialized versions of
programmable bricks are pocket-sized LEGO bricks (with tiny computers embedded)
called “Mindstorms.” To operate Mindstorms, users create programs
and transfer them to a brick. An example program could activate motors to drive
the wheels of a miniature car. The program could also read sensors to see if
the car is near a wall – making activities like maze exploration
possible.

Programmable bricks control physical objects. In contrast,
Hook-ups control virtual objects. A Mindstorms powered car that is programmed
to explore physical spaces has to be constrained by physical forces such as
gravity whereas a virtual car does not. A person who is excited about learning
in the context of space exploration may have difficulty launching a Mindstorms
creation into orbit. Through Hook-ups activities, they can design and create a
tangible control panel to maneuver an on-screen spaceship through a virtual
universe.

3. DESIGNING HOOK-UPS

Hook-ups are user-created devices that influence the
behavior of computer programs. They have one or more sensors that collect
information from the world and send it to computer programs (that present the
data to users as numbers). For example, a light sensor can continuously report
the amount of light in a room. The user can write a program that adjusts the
brightness of a digital image in response to the data received. Sensor input is
captured via a Hook-ups interface board (HUB). This board connects sensors to
computers through the kind of wire one can find on discarded headphones.
Hook-ups can be designed for a multitude of interface boards and software
packages. The Hook-ups described in this paper interface with a graphics-based
programming environment called Scratch [5] that already supports an early
version of the HUB.

The primary creators of Hook-ups are 10--18 year old members
of community technology centers (CTCs). As
a starting point to creating Hook-ups, young people are encouraged to work with
objects or materials they like. Wilensky suggests that developing personalized
connections to objects engages student thinking, feeling and learning -
not only about the object itself, but about other objects - and ultimately
facilitates insights about self by the learner [6].

Subsequent sections
show examples of how the process of designing custom, tangible interfaces can
help youth develop personal connections to a range of materials, use materials
in unexpected ways, and become comfortable with expressing themselves with new
design tools. Hook-ups can include materials such as: discarded everyday items
(paper plates, cardboard boxes); simple electronic components; deconstructed
electronic toys; custom-made circuit boards; output from leading-edge
personal-fabrication tools, etc.

3.1. Hooking into a Community’s Diverse Interests

Hook-ups are
introduced to communities that range in age, demographics, learning styles, and
interests. All learners approach design activities with a different set
of experiences and preferences. A challenge that Hook-ups will face is engaging
youth who had previously been disinterested in (or frustrated by) design
activities. To meet this challenge and
engage diverse learners, the Hook-ups initiative introduces new design tools,
provides support materials, and makes example projects available.

Hook-ups enable newcomers to initially explore the type of
design with which they feel most comfortable, begin designing, and eventually
try out other types of design. Ultimately, the objective is for participants to
gain the ability to move fluidly back and forth between physical and virtual
design as they desire. Young people who
have learned to program their own games may become interested in designing
customized controllers using simple sensors (i.e., switches and sliders).
Conversely, young people who have learned that objects around them have
electronic components that can serve as sensors may become interested in
programming their own interactive programs. Hook-ups research will focus on choices
made by youth, projects they construct, connections they establish with
materials, and perceived increases in programming proficiency.

4. Introducing and DEVELOPING Hook-ups design activities

Hook-ups activities
at CTCs can be introduced in several ways in order to provide research
opportunities for comparison and contrast between various approaches. Hook-ups
are currently being introduced in two ways at local Boston CTCs (local Computer
Clubhouses and the South
End Technology
Center). The first
introduction approach involves conducting Hook-ups work extensively with a few
young people. The second approach includes working with larger groups in
semi-structured workshops. Youth choose to work alone, in pairs, or in groups,
and the effects of the design processes for each case can be analyzed. The next
section highlights multiple approaches to introducing Hook-ups.

4.1. The Need for Flexibility in Introducing Design Activities

Hook-ups activities are designed for informal learning environments
that depend on the voluntary participation of youth. In such circumstances,
incorporating their pre-existing interests and activities is especially
important. The following passage, taken from my field notes, provides an
example of a flexible approach to introducing Hook-ups that resulted in a
learner using design tools and materials in new ways.

I started Scratch on my laptop to
gauge if onlookers would become interested in using it. I showed a sequence of
sample projects - some with Hook-ups - to the members who asked me what I was
doing. A fellow mentor/researcher then sat with a group of 3 members that opted
to learn Scratch programming. I took approximately 8 other members interested
in Hook-ups to a table that contained items I brought such as wire, scissors,
and push-buttons. The youth then added to the table materials they found such
as water bottles, plastic bags and paper plates. After 20 minutes of group
tinkering, a latecomer approached the table with a unique idea. He grabbed two wires and requested
the scissors. He did not cut the wires; instead he taped a wire to each handle.
He explained that when a person was cutting, the wires would meet and trigger
an explosion [on the screen]. Another member used Scratch’s image editor
to draw graphics depicting explosions. The visit concluded by my building an
example program that tied together the scissor interface and the explosion
animation.

The Hook-ups initiative will also explore the balance
between structure and flexibility in informal learning environments. As shown
in the passage above, human support, basic materials, and project examples are
provided. Project examples are carefully selected based on their ability to
demonstrate how multiple simple elements come together to make engaging projects.
Participants have the flexibility to use elements of provided materials in
conjunction with elements they bring to the activities.

Simple Scratch program examples can quickly be deconstructed
and rebuilt to show how basic programming concepts work. Some learners are able
to see an example rebuilt and begin manipulating programs right away. For
others, designing a physical interface to a program makes the programming task
more approachable. For example, the following passage presents such an instance
of a learner overcoming a perceived inability to program. As a result of
becoming deeply involved in the construction of a tangible interface, the
learner found the motivation to become involved in the programming of a Scratch
project.

Six 12-year-old participants attended a 2-day mini-video
game design workshop. They decided to collaboratively create a game about
violence and television. Each participant volunteered to lead one aspect of the
game’s design. No one volunteered to build the Scratch program to
integrate all of the parts (hesitation is understandable given the complexity
of the task and the limited amount of time available). The workshop leaders
gave the group an introduction to Scratch programming yet some members did not
catch on. One member named Jack was unable to understand the basic programming
concepts and began to lose interest. Jack was presented with a box full of
scissors, tape, wire, and old toys and asked if he was interested in creating a
controller for the group’s game. With a small amount of adult assistance,
Jack created a one-button remote control to flip past violent channels on a
virtual TV. With a desire to program something that would respond to his remote
control, Jack became motivated to program. He retained and reused concepts in
conditional programming to achieve his task. He even faced the challenge of
programming the TV to loop back to channel 1 after reaching the highest
channel.

5. future DIRECTIONS

The Hook-ups initiative is in its very early stages. Future
Hook-ups research will establish new
activities that integrate multiple types of design. By doing so, a better
understanding will be gained of how young people learn when they are engaged in
flexible design processes. The Hook-ups initiative will continue to investigate:
(1) how input device design is a good context for learning; (2) how
learners become engaged in physical and virtual design processes when
connections to different design materials are established; (3) how design
activities adapt to individuals’ learning styles; and (4) how the
structure and flexibility of Hook-ups design activities contributes to youth
learning ideas from areas such as programming, interface design, and physics.

6. REFERENCES

[1.] Eisenberg, M., Eisenberg, A., Hendrix, S., et
al. 2003. As We May Print: New Directions in Output Devices and Computational
Crafts for Children. Preston, UK:
Interactive Design and Children.

[2.]
Kafai, Y. B. 1995. Minds in Play:
Computer Game Design as a Context for Children's Learning. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

[3.]
Papert, S. 1991. Situating Constructionism. In: I.
Harel and S. Papert (Eds.). Norwood,
NJ: Ablex Publishing.

[4.]
Resnick, M., Martin, F., Sargent, R., et al. 1996. Programmable Bricks: Toys to
Think With. IBM Systems Journal
35(3-4):443--452.

[5.]
Resnick, M., Kafai, Y., Maeda, J., et al. 2003. A Networked, Media-Rich
Programming Environment to Enhance Technological Fluency at After-School
Centers in Economically-Disadvantaged Communities. Proposal to the National
Science Foundation (project funded 2003-2007).

[6.]
Wilenksy, U. 1991. Abstract Meditations on the Concrete and Concrete
Implications for Mathematics Education. Constructionism. In: I.
Harel and S. Papert (Eds.). Norwood,
NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Supporting and Changing Practices of
Nested and Overlapping Educational Communities

Daniel Suthers, Violet Harada, Joyce Yukawa, and Viil Lid

Department of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Hawai`i.

[email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]

1. INTRODUCTION

Applications of information technology to support systemic
reform in public school systems have taken several forms. Instructional
applications include attempts to more effectively convey information to
students, to empower students' own agency in accessing information and
constructing knowledge, and to aid teachers’ classroom management, lesson
preparation, and assessment. Technology has been proffered as a change agent in
itself: teachers will need to change their practices in order to use
technologies designed for doing authentic inquiry and communicating or collaborating
with others [10]. Information technology can also support professional
development through access to online courses, and enable participation in
distributed communities of practice. The work reported in this paper has taken
this latter strategy. Because today’s school systems operate in an
environment of constant change, professional development requires a paradigm
shift from a scripted training approach to a more fluid approach that
encourages the incorporation of networks, coalitions, and partnerships. The
capacity to network with other professionals is essential to the notion of
communities of practice. McLaughlin and Mitra argue that sustaining large-scale
theory-based reform efforts “requires a community of practice to provide
support, deflect challenges from the broader environment, and furnish the
feedback and encouragement essential to going deeper” [7]. Barab defines
a community that advances ongoing and open-ended professional development as a
“persistent, sustained network of individuals who share and develop an
overlapping knowledge base, set of beliefs, values, history and experiences
focused on a common practice and/or mutual enterprise” [1]. These
communities change the relationships among teachers, breaking the isolation that
most teachers have found so confining.

Over the past several years, Hawai`i Networked Learning
Communities (HNLC), a National Science Foundation Rural Systemic Initiative
(RSI), has been supporting communities of educators in Hawai`i. The goal of HNLC is to empower
educators to prepare students in economically disadvantaged rural schools for
life and careers in today’s complex and dynamic technological world by
enabling them to attain high standards in science, mathematics, and technology
(SMT). HNLC is the result of collaboration between the Department of
Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) of the University of Hawai`i
at Manoa (UHM) and the Advanced Technology Research Branch (ATRB) of the
Hawai`i Department of Education (HIDOE). One component of our work is a
“virtual community center,” realized as a dynamic website
(hnlc.org). We chose to use Internet technology to build and sustain a
community of rural educators because they work in small and isolated schools
separated by island geography. This website targets educators at two levels:
teams of educators who are formally involved in HNLC, and the broader community
of educational stakeholders in Hawai`i.
The website includes a community forum for sharing news and stories of any
nature deemed appropriate by members, and a database of Hawai`i-based resources
for education. Two additional tools are specifically intended to support the
work of HNLC school teams: a template that guides unit planning, and an
“artifact-centered” discussion tool for sharing and discussing
work.

In the spring and early summer of 2003 (about 12 months
after hnlc.org was first released), we undertook our first evaluation
specifically targeted at determining levels of teacher use of our online
community tools. This evaluation is summarized in Suthers, et al. [13]. At the
time of the evaluation, our work was focused on getting small teams of teachers
to collaborate, online as well as face-to-face, in order to plan
standards-based, assessment-driven and student-centered inquiry units. Overall,
respondents had positive attitudes about the use of technology in general for a
range of purposes, but as of summer 2003 they had not made significant use of
hnlc.org outside of sponsored events, with the exceptions of school teams
preparing for those events and the initiative of a few individuals. Focus
groups indicated some differences in the expectations of developers and users.
The results of this study challenged us to rethink our efforts to use Internet
technology in support of systemic reform. In this paper we summarize the most
important portion of our deliberations concerning the community and practices
to be supported.

2. WHAT COMMUNITY SHOULD BE SUPPORTED?

Although our ultimate goal is increased student performance and participation in SMT, we want to accomplish
this in a sustainable manner, which requires that we change the practices of
those directly responsible for student learning rather than working directly
with students ourselves. Therefore we reaffirmed that we want to support the
work of teachers. Our working assumption from the outset has been that if
teachers experienced the use of technology in their learning they would better
understand how to use it for their students’ learning. However, as
discussed below, we found that we cannot neglect designing technology for use
by students.

HNLC has been working with school teams formed for the
purpose of representing each school to HNLC and developing an integrated unit
plan as a model of how education could be done in their school. These teams may
or may not be constituted of prior collaborators. An alternative approach is to
identify existing communities within the schools rather than leaving team
formation up to school administrators [6]. Regardless of how they are formed,
school teams should enable educators of different disciplines or at different
grade levels within a school to work with each other towards continuity in the
students’ learning experience across classes and grade levels.

We also recognize that relevant communities can extend
beyond the schools. Teachers specializing in a given subject or grade level may
want to network with each other across schools, forming communities of practice, the second “knit” of a
double-knit organization [14]. They may wish to discuss specific math and
science projects being implemented on multiple campuses as well as applications
for curriculum resources being used in various classrooms. There are also
groups defined by administrative structures such as the HIDOE complexes (high
schools and their primary and intermediate feeder schools). Collaboration
within a complex could improve the educational experience from the
students’ point of view if innovations at the primary and secondary
levels were coordinated. Finally, we considered whether our HNLC colleagues
within the HIDOE should be the primary targets of our technology support. The
ATRB team members plan the HNLC professional development program and carry it
out in scheduled events, school visits, and online instruction. Although ATRB
staff suggested that we focus on teachers, we recognize the need to work
closely with the ATRB staff to ensure that the affordances of our technologies
mesh well with their plans for professional development. For example, we found
that because participants will most likely try new tools and practices at
face-to-face training sessions organized by ATRB, we need to design for
transitions between face-to-face and online use.

Also
of interest for our systemic reform agenda is the statewide community of SMT
educators within HIDOE, and the even broader community of stakeholders and
interested parties that includes parents, employers, and representatives of
other federally funded programs that have an educational outreach component.
The expectations and resources of these stakeholders are critical for shaping
and sustaining the future of education.

Our efforts
would be diluted if we tried to support all of these communities at once, but
nor can we focus only on school teams and ignore their context. We now believe
that hnlc.org must selectively support nested
and overlapping communities of
practice [9; 14] that extend beyond the schools and into the general community.
We need to focus on teachers as those primarily responsible for student
achievement, but not neglect the larger community context of education. Our
primary focus in the design of hnlc.org is now on both the school teams and on
inter-school collaborations (communities of practice) in which educators and
ATRB staff share ideas and advice (Figure 1). Our secondary focus remains on
the larger community that forms the environment of resources and expectations
within which our primary communities grow. Our working hypothesis is that it is
essential for the sustainability of
systemic reform that we not only address the needs of the practitioners whose
work immediately impacts upon student performance, but also initiate change in
the broader community that places expectations on the school system as well as
provides the resources to meet those expectations.

Discussions in the Community-Based Learning Workshop held at
the 2004 International Conference on the Learning Sciences reinforced our view
of the importance of nested communities and provided us with some fresh ideas
about how we can support these communities. One way is through fostering a
common identity and a culture of shared meaning and practices. A recent
redesign of hnlc.org recognizes the importance of community awareness. Personal
profiles displaying each member’s community contributions serve to build
their reputations within the community as well as facilitate finding other
contributions by the same member [5]. Allowing the members to personalize their
online presence by sharing information about themselves creates opportunities
for finding others with similar interests or complementary skills, thus
facilitating the forming of new collaborative connections and groups [4].

The concept of small group cognition helps clarify our focus
on teacher teams. Small groups are the unit that mediates between individual
learning and community learning, and therefore are the appropriate unit of
action for systemic reform [11]. Yet small groups do not exist in isolation:
they form out of and are supported by communities. We are initiating a new
effort to mobilize and support new members from the statewide community, with
the expectation that this effort will foster new small communities of interest
and that they will leverage resources provided by the larger community. We
intend to study the interaction between the larger community, small communities
and groups, and individual teachers in our target population to determine the
effect of embedding in nested communities and how this is mediated by our
technology.

3. WHAT PRACTICE SHOULD BE SUPPORTED?

Having clarified the overlapping and nested spheres of
communities of practice that we intend to support, we are still faced with the
question, “What practice?” Should we design our system to meet
practitioners’ immediate needs and working practices (as conventional wisdom
in human-computer system design suggests), even if that meant supporting the
existing teacher-centered forms of instruction?

We would be neglecting the systemic reform’s objective
of changing practice if we merely
focused on supporting existing practice. Systemic reform requires that
something sustainable change in the system
beyond an immediate impact on this year’s cohort of students.
Furthermore, systemic reform means change, and that may mean trying to get
educators to do things other than that which they think they most need. We need
to change their practices as well as support them. The objective of this reform
is a reflective-action form of practice – akin to action research –
in which teachers use embedded assessment to examine the effects of their instructional
interventions and the learning opportunities they create for student
performance, and adjust those interventions and seek new opportunities as
needed to improve performance. If this
were the prevalent practice of our user community, then the tools that they need,
and indeed demand, would be different than at present.

What role does technology play in driving the change
process? Can we offer technology (integrated with professional development)
that meets the demands of this imagined community of practice of the future,
and thereby perturb the present activity system to change towards that future?
This strategy will not work if educators don’t use the tools, and they
won’t use tools that don’t meet their present needs. Also, this
approach presents a triple challenge: by asking teachers to (1) work
collaboratively, (2) via online technology, and (3) to plan and engage in
student-centered inquiry learning, we are asking them to do three things that
most of them are not accustomed to doing. If teachers have not engaged in
reflective discussion even in face-to-face settings, it is unrealistic to
expect this behavior in an online environment [6]. Where do we begin?

Our hope is that the distinction between supporting and
changing practice may be artificial or irrelevant, if the tools we offer are
amenable to supporting both practices in teachers’ current zone of
proximal development as well as more reflective practices of the future.
Strategically, we need to build tools to support current practice, gain acceptance,
and then build on this base to change the practice along with and through the
tools. This process could be supported by technology serving as a collaborative
workspace with functions to enable socialization and interpersonal connection
[2].

A related question is how teachers will learn to use
technology. We began under the assumption that educators could learn to teach
with technology by first learning to learn with technology. However, through
surveys and focus groups as well as informal experience we found that HNLC
educators tend to view technology as resources for use with their students, and
are more likely to be inspired by their students’ use of technology than
vice-versa. Yet they also acknowledge that technology is an important resource
for their own professional development. Perhaps the resolution to this apparent
tension between teacher-first versus student-first use is to shape professional
development so that participants use the tools in the way students would be
asked to use them in inquiry-based learning. They would thereby gain
simultaneous training in the practice of inquiry-based learning and the use of
technologies as specifically applied to the inquiry activities of themselves and their students.

4. WHAT DO WE BUILD?

We have so far considered what we can do to support present
and future practices of multiple communities and teams. A deeper problem arises
if many of these communities of practice do not already exist. Then the
question becomes, “What do we build – the community, the practice,
or the tools?” Communities of practice need to be built from a complex
array of factors and in a manner that is timely and unique to each group. A
community design cannot simply be proffered to a group [3]. Kling and
Courtright contend that it is easier to foster technology supported community development than to nurture technology initiated communities [6]. Communities
evolve within groups around their particular needs and for purposes that they
value. Program planners must face issues of sociability as well as usability in
developing a design that links to and supports people’s social
interactions [2; 8]. Fostering trusting and respectful relationships is
paramount. This is the basis for community building, and, once established,
each community of practice then directs the development, adoption, and use of
technology for its specific needs. The process combines both bottom-up and
top-down efforts to answer the questions we pose here. When multiple, nested
communities of practice are involved, our responsibilities for attentiveness
and technological responsiveness are correspondingly increased and should be
clearly prioritized.

5. CURRENT RESEARCH

Our continued research is organized around two major issues:
(1) technology-supported communities and systemic reform (as discussed above),
and (2) the affordances of technology as a mediating artifact in supporting
these communities [13]. We raise the following questions to guide our
investigation. (1) What strategies can encourage time-pressed,
technology-hesitant teachers to use technology for their own learning and
collaboration? Once technology has been adopted for collaboration, how do the
new relationships and communities so formed influence classroom practices
towards genuine inquiry? How are new relationships formed via technology or via
a mixture of face-to-face and online interactions? Does the embedding of small
groups within the context of a statewide online community lead to the formation
and enhancement of small group work? Do technology-mediated groups or
communities change the operation of the organization in which they are
embedded? (2) How is technology used not only as “communication
channel” but also as a medium within which questions and problems are
identified and shared solutions are negotiated? How can design of
representational notations influence such collaborative inquiry? How can
workspaces be adapted to users' needs?

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to the numerous individuals who have
contributed towards HNLC, including Vicki Kajioka (HNLC co-PI and ATRB
director), Claudia Atta (HNLC interim project director), and Pat Donohue
(former HNLC project director), and the other members of the ATRB and UH teams
for their hard work during the period reported in this paper: Malia Chow, Wil
Doane, Laura Girardeau, Bruce Harris, Kyle Shodai, Joshua Wingstrom, and Ryan
Yoshioka. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under
Cooperative Agreement No. 0100393. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

7. REFERENCES

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[2.] Barab, S.A, MaKinster, J.G., and
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[3.] Fullan, M. 1993. Change Forces: Probing the Depths of
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[4.] Girgensohn, A. and Lee, A. 2002.
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[5.] Kelly, S.U., Sung, C., and
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[6.] Kling, R., and Courtright, C.
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[7.] McLaughlin, M.W., and Mitra, D.
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[1]
This paper is excerpted from (Stahl, in press), where issues of group
cognition are considered at length [4].

[2]
There are many other seminal voices concerning distributed cognition from
fields such as phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty [23]), cognitive science
(e.g., Hutchins [17]), and educational psychology (e.g., Salomon [28]),
including enactivism (e.g., Davis & Sumara [6]). It is well beyond the
scope of this paper to discuss the implications of these diverse approaches.

[3] The DESCANT (SciTech) Acronym stands for
‘Designing E-learning Systems for Celebrating and Nurturing Teaching (in
Science and Technology)’. The project is an Australian Research Council
(ARC) funded partnership between the University
of Technology, Sydney
(UTS) and the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (DET).

[4] The original model that appeared in print in
Schaverien and Cosgrove [31] included five acts of learning (excluding
operating). This has since been revised to include the sixth act of operating.

[5] Supported by the German Research Foundation
(DFG) and the Ministry for Science and Research of North Rhine Westphalia

[6]
A slogan of a local pressure group emphasizes this point clearly by proclaiming
“Vielfalt Altstadt” meaning ‘diversity in the old town center.’

[7]
Hauptschulabschluss is the German equivalent to the certificate of completion
of compulsory basic secondary schooling.

[8] We follow Dersch’s definition
of development aid:

Extension within the framework of
development has the function of supporting culturally traditional (indigenous)
people as they move towards modernisation. The person-centred extension focuses
on the personal autonomy of the client with the objective of teaching the
clients to become responsible for themselves, to make their own decisions, and
to take an active part in their changing world [2].