Notes
Essays on Technology, Interaction and Cognition
The cover art pictures the cyclic struggle of
collaborative interaction: Gustav Vigeland, Tumbling
around, c. 1930, bronze, Vigeland Park bridge, Oslo, Norway.
Photo by G. Stahl, 2003. It is taken from a gath=
ering
of hundreds of stone and metal artifacts showing a variety of human groupin=
gs
and individual stances, created by the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. =
A primordial form of collaboration is that of man and =
woman,
as represented in this sculpture. Throughout the decade covered by this boo=
k, I
have thrived in the collaboration with my Bliss, who supported me and toler=
ated
my long hours at the computer. She taught me a great deal about the nature =
and
joys of collaboration, in both theory and practice.
Chapter 1. Share Global=
ly,
Adapt Locally
<=
/span>
Previously published as: Stahl, G=
.,
Sumner, T., & Owen, R. (1995). Share globally, adapt locally: Software =
to
create and distribute student-centered curriculum. Computers and Education. Sp=
ecial
Issue on Education and the Internet, 24
(3), 237-246.
This chapter was originally publi=
shed
with co-authors Tamara Sumner and Robert Owen. It describes work done at Ow=
en
Research with support by DOE and NSF. Michael Wright and Carla Selby also
worked on this project. The project received encouragement from Len Scrogan,
Technology Specialist in the Curriculum and Instruction Division of Boulder
Valley Public Schools, and Jim Spohrer of Apple Computers. The design
environment approach grew out of research at the Center for LifeLong Learni=
ng
and Design, University
of Colorado.=
The research reported in this cha=
pter
and several others was supported in part by the NSF; any opinions, findings,
and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this book are those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation.
Previously unpublished manuscript:
Stahl, G. (1999). Evolution
of an LSA-based interactive environment for learning to write summaries=
.
It was originally written for submission as a companion piece to ADDIN EN.CITE
<EndNote><Cite><Author>Kintsch</Author><Year>=
2000</Year><RecNum>133</RecNum><MDL><REFERENCE_T=
YPE>0</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>133</REFNUM><AUTHORS&=
gt;<AUTHOR>Kintsch,
Eileen</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Steinhart,
David</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Stahl,
Gerry</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Matthews,
Cindy</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Lamb, Ronald</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>=
the
LSA Research
Group,</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2000</YEAR><TITLE=
>Developing
summarization skills through the use of LSA-backed
feedback</TITLE><SECONDARY_TITLE>Interactive Learning
Environments</SECONDARY_TITLE><VOLUME>8</VOLUME><NUMBE=
R>2</NUMBER><PAGES>87-109</PAGES><URL>http://www=
.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/publications/journals/ile2000/ile.html</UR=
L></MDL></Cite></EndNote>(Kintsc=
h et al., 2000) in the special issue =
of Interactive Learning Environments =
on
LSA. It was never submitted.
The res=
earch
reported here was supported in part by a grant from the Cognitive Studies in
Educational Practice Project of the McDonnell Foundation. The PIs on the gr=
ant
were Walter Kintsch, Gerhard Fischer and Thomas Landauer. The initial versi=
ons
of State the Essence were
developed by the author, with assistance from Rogerio dePaula and David
Steinhart. Steinhart developed a later version, named
Summary Street, as pa=
rt of
his dissertation. In addition, Eileen Kintsch, Darrell Laham and Maureen
Schreiner also participated in this LSA Research Group. Cindy
Matthews and Ronald Lamb team-taught the sixth-grade classroom at Platt Middle School<=
/st1:PlaceType>,
Boulder, Colorado,
where the software was used in 1997 and 1998. The teachers were more
than helpful, and, as always, the kids were great. The views expressed in t=
his
chapter are those of the author, and are not necessarily shared by Walter
Kintsch, Tom Landauer and Eileen Kintsch, who provided the primary project
leadership.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (1996). Armchair missions to Mars: Using
case-based reasoning and fuzzy logic to simulate a time series model of
astronaut crews. In Pal, S., Dillon, T., Yeung, D. (Eds=
.)
(2000) Soft computing in case-based
reasoning, London, UK: Springer Verlag, 321-344.=
This was an extended version of a paper published in Knowledge-Based Systems (vol. 9, pp. 409-415).
The research was conducted at Owen
Research, Inc. (ORI) in Boulde=
r,
Colorado, during a two year=
SBIR
grant from NASA in 1993-1995. ORI is a small research lab founded and run by
Dr. Robert Owen. Dr. Owen is a physicist specializing in laser optics. He a=
lso
has a Ph.D. in anthropology, and his dissertation in that field led to this
research in modeling small-group behavior using AI techniques. I developed =
the
technical approach and programmed the system. Dr. Brent Reeves assisted with
the fuzzy logic algorithms. To help collect and analyze social science
literature related to small groups in isolated conditions, we worked with
Professor Russell McGoodwin of the Anthropology Department at the Universit=
y of Colorado (CU) and his student, Nick Colmenares. In
addition, I conducted several interviews of an experienced astronaut, Mike
Lounge, and discussed our project with him. I also discussed this work and =
that
of the following chapter with Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon=
.
This research was sponsored by the
Behavioral and Performance Laboratory at Johnson=
Space Center
in Houston, Texas, part of NASA’s Astronaut
Support Division. We worked closely with NASA researchers Dr. Joanna Wood a=
nd
Dr. Albert Holland on the design of the software and the data. At the end of
the project, we delivered the software to them to continue the work.=
Previou=
sly published
as: Stahl, G. (1993). Supporti=
ng
situated interpretation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
Cognitive Science Society (CogSci ‘93), Boulder, CO. Proceedings, 965-970.
This chapter is indebted to Gerha=
rd
Fischer, Ray McCall, Kumiyo Nakakoji, Jonathan Ostwald, and Tamara Sumner, =
who
helped to focus it, and to the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D)
research group at the Uni=
versity
of Colorado general=
ly,
whose ideas and systems it tries to ground theoretically and extend practic=
ally.
The Hermes system was a re-write of McCall’s Phidias system, an object-oriented implementation of his
contexts as computational perspectives. The chapter reports on main themes =
in
my computer science dissertation.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2000). Collaborative
information environments to support knowledge construction by communities.<=
/span>
AI & Society, 14, 1-27.
The earlier research on CIEs for
design is a collaboration of the author with Gerhard Fischer and Jonathan
Ostwald. We would like to thank the other members of L3D,
particularly the “Organizational Memory and Organizational Learning&#=
8221;
group, including Jay Smith, Scott Berkebile, Sam Stoller, Jim Masson and Tim
Ohara who worked on the system=
. Our
knowledge of LAN design benefited from our domain investigators John Rieman=
and
Ken Anderson and local informants Kyle Kucson and Evi Nemeth. The more rece=
nt
research on CIEs for knowledge construction involved the author with Rogerio
dePaula, Thomas Herrmann and his students at Dortmund, Ted Habermann and his
group at NOAA, Dan Kowal and his middle school students, the collaborators =
in
the “Readings in Cognitive Science” seminar and the researchers=
in
the “Articulate Learners” project. The work reported here was
supported in part by grants from ARPA, the McDonnell Foundation and NSF. NetSuite Advanc=
ed
Professional Design is a trademark of NetSuite.
An early version of this chapter =
was
presented in 1998 as Collaborative
information environments for innovative communities of practice at the
German Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Conference (D-CSCW ‘98):
Groupware und organizatorische Innovation, Dortmund, Germany,
Proceedings, 195-210.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2001). WebGuide: Guiding collaborative
learning on the Web with perspectives. Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME), 2001(1). http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1/.<=
/span>
This chapter grew out of the author’s Readings
and Research in Cognitive Science seminar, Spring
1999, on “Computer Mediation of Collaborative Learning,” with t=
he
following participants: Kirstin Butcher, John Caron, Gabe Johnson, Elizabeth
Lenell, Scott Long, Rogerio dePaula, Paul Prestopnik, Tammy Sumner. The WebGuide resear=
ch is
a collaboration of the author with Rogerio dePaula and other L3D
members, Ted Habermann and his group at NOAA, Dan Kowal and his middle scho=
ol
students, the participants in my WebGuide seminars, Thomas Herrmann and his
group at Dortmund,
and the researchers in the ICS “Articulate Learners” project. <=
/span>
The first major version of this chapter was in respons=
e to
Ricki Goldmann’s invitation to submit to an AERA paper session at the
1999 conference in Montreal.
Earlier posters, demos and papers on WebGuide were presented at CSCL ‘=
;97,
CILT ‘98, CSCW ‘98, ICLS ‘98, Interak=
tion
in Web: Innovative Kommunikationsformen ‘98, WebNet ‘99, GROUP =
‘99,
CSCL ‘99 and CILT ‘99. While incorporating some of the content =
of
these other presentations, the current chapter is based primarily on the fi=
nal JIME version. The JIME reviewers, Helen Chappel-Hayios, Hans van der Meij and Gar=
y Boyd,
provided supportive and stimulating reflections; their comments were
incorporated in the JIME public=
ation
and are summarized in the present version.
The research was supported in part by grants from NSF,=
the
McDonnell Foundation and CU’s Lab for New Media Strategy and Design.<=
/span>
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2002). Groupware goes to school: Adapti=
ng
BSCW to the classroom. International
Journal of Computer Applications Technology (IJCAT). 19 (3/4). 162=
-174.
The ITCOLE Project—funded by
the European Commission “School
of Tomorrow” framework gra=
nt
IST-00-III.2—was a collaboration of many people from universities and
schools throughout Europe. The project w=
as
conceived largely by people in the Centre for Research in Networked Learning
and Knowledge Building
at the University of Helsinki and in the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Much of t=
he Synergeia user
interface was designed by the Media Lab group. =
MapTool was implemented at the University of Murcia=
in Spain.
The project manager for ITCOLE at FIT was Wolfgang Appelt. The implementati=
on
of most of the features described in this chapter was done by the BSCW group =
at
Fraunhofer-FIT, especially by Rudolf Ruland and me. To carry out the adapta=
tion
of a complex system like in a w=
ay
that takes advantages of the strengths of its design and does not contradict
its philosophy would not be possible without detailed guidance from the BSCW develo=
pment
staff, including Thomas Koch, Elke Hinrichs and Gerd Woetzel, in addition to
Rudolf. I am grateful to all the people at FIT who made my year there possi=
ble,
productive and enjoyable.
Parts of this chapter originally
formed a User Manual for . An ea=
rly
version of this chapter was presented at the International Workshop on
Groupware (CRIWG ‘02) in La Serena, Chile, Se=
ptember
1-3, 2002. A number of CRIWG reviewers and participants made suggestions th=
at
significantly improved this chapter.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2003). Knowledge negotiation in asynchronous
learning networks. Paper presented at the Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences (HICSS ‘03), Hawaii, HA.
The concept of knowledge negotiat=
ion
grew out of discussions at Fraunhofer-FIT, where I had the pleasure of work=
ing
in 2001/2002. The system=
was
implemented there with the help of the BSCW development team (especially Ru=
dolf
Ruland and Thomas Koch) as part of the European Commission’s ITCOLE
Project IST-2000-26249. My concern with negotiation goes back to discussions
since 1997 with Thomas Herrmann and his students, both in Boulder
and in Dortmund.
The chapter has also benefited from personal communications with Volker Wul=
f,
as well as from comments by several HICSS reviewers.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2000). A model of collaborative knowledge bui=
lding.
Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference of the Learning Scie=
nces
(ICLS ‘00), Ann Arbor,
MI. Proceedings, LEA, 70-77.
This chapter was motivated by
modeling sessions with Thomas Herrmann and Kai-Uwe Loser during a visit to =
the University of Dortmu=
nd
in June 1999 and exchanges with Tim Koschmann while he was a visiting profe=
ssor
in Boulder. The
alternative models appended to the end of the chapter use the conventions of
Herrmann’s editor=
. The
original paper benefited from comments by collaborators in my Fall ‘99 seminar on KBEs, participants in the CS=
CL
‘99 workshop on KBEs and reviewers for ICLS 2000.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2002). Rediscovering
CSCL. In T. Koschmann, R. Hall & N. Miyake (Eds.), CSCL 2: Carrying forward the conversat=
ion
(pp. 169-181). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
The view of collaborative learnin=
g as
visible in interaction is itself a collaborative product that has emerged in
interactions of the author with Timothy Koschmann as well as with Curtis
LeBaron, Robert Craig, Alena Sanusi and other members of a Fall
2000 seminar in CSCL. This chapter was written for the CSCL 2 volume.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2002). Contributions
to a theoretical framework for CSCL. Paper presented at the internation=
al
conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL ‘02),
Boulder, CO. Proceedings, LEA, =
1-2
& 62-71.
The ideas in this chapter grew ou=
t of
collaborative knowledge building mediated by WebGuide in a series of seminars on CSCL at
the University of
Colorado. I would
particularly like to thank participants Alena Sanusi, Curt LeBaron and Bob =
Craig
from the Communication Department as well as the teachers and students at <=
st1:PlaceName
w:st=3D"on">Platt Middle School<=
/st1:PlaceType>
in Boulder who
were involved with .
The Introduction part of this cha=
pter
is taken from the Introduction =
to the
CSCL ‘02 Proceedings (Stahl,=
2002). The remainder was a
paper I presented at that conference; Jeremy Roschelle was the discussant.<=
/span>
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2002). Understanding educational computational
artifacts across community boundaries. Paper presented at the
International Society for Cultural Research and Activity Theory (ISCRAT
‘02), Amsterdam,
NL.
Thanks to Timothy Koschmann, who =
has
long pushed me in the direction of this kind of analysis, and to Curt LeBar=
on
and Bob Craig who opened up the communication-based micro-ethnographic appr=
oach
to me. Much of the transcription and insight int=
o the
interaction was due to Alena Sanusi. Support for the original research whil=
e in
L3D at Colorado
was from the McDonnell Foundation, NSF and Omnicom. The analysis and writing
continued while I was in the CSCW group of Fraunhofer-FIT near Bonn, Germany.
This work was presented in various formats at ISCRAT ‘02, ICLS ‘=
;02,
Ethnography in Education ‘01 and ‘03.
Previously published as: Stahl, G.
(2004) Collabor=
ating with relational references. Paper
presented at the workshop on representational guidance at the American
Educational Research Association (AERA 2004), San Diego, CA.
Rogers Hall made two suggestive
observations related to the data a=
t a
workshop on video analysis at the International Conference of the Learning
Sciences (ICLS 2002) where I presented the data from chapter 12: (1) that
divergent interpretations of a group discourse might open a space for group
creativity and (2) that the deictic relation of “This one’s
different” is not to a simple rocket object, but to a more complex
relationship among objects, and that such a complexity caused problems for =
both
the students and the analysts. I have attempted to explore these suggestions
(1) by trying to understand the interaction of group meaning and individual
interpretation in later chapters and (2) by looking at the relational chara=
cter
of the reference in this chapter.
A condensed version of this chapt=
er,
translated and revised by Angela Carell, was previously published as: Stahl=
, G.
& Carell, A. (2004). Kommunikationskonzepte (The ro=
le of
communication concepts for CSCL pedagogy). In J. Haake, G. Schwabe & M. Wessner (Eds.) CSCL-Kompendium. (pp. 229-237). <=
st1:City
w:st=3D"on">Munich, Germany: Olden=
bourg.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2004). Building
collaborative knowing: Elements of a social theory of CSCL. In J.-W. Strijbos, P. Kirschner & R. Martens (Eds.=
), What we know about CSCL: And implementing =
it in
higher education. (pp. 53-86). Boston,
MA: Kluwer.
This chapter was originally writt=
en
as the theory chapter for the edited volume in the Kluwer CSCL series. As a
result of working with Jan-Willem Strijbos on that project, I invited him to
work on my research at Drexel for five months in early 2004. During his vis=
it,
we celebrated the publication of his book, intertwined our contrasting
methodological proclivities and discussed the first draft of this book.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2003). Meaning and
interpretation in collaboration. In B. Wasson, S.
Ludvigsen, U. Hoppe (Eds.) Designing
for change in networked learning environments. (pp. 523-532). Bergen, Norway:
Kluwer.
This chapter was the final plenary
presentation at CSCL ‘03 in Bergen <=
st1:place
w:st=3D"on">Norway,
where it was well received. Subsequent comments from students in Dan
Suthers’ class and in my CSCL seminar led me to expand several central
points.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2004). Can community knowledge exceed its members’? ACM SigGroup Bulletin, 23 (3), 1-13.
Parts of this chapter began life
within one of the VMT research proposals co-authored with Stephen Weimar,
Wesley Shumar and Ian Underwood of the Math Forum @ Drexel. Early versions =
were
presented at Communities & Technology 2003 in Ams=
terdam,
Netherlands, and at GR=
OUP
2003 on Sanibel Island, Florida.
The central section of this chapt=
er
is based on: Koschmann, T., Stahl, G., & Zemel, A. (2005). The video analyst’s manifesto (or the implications of
Garfinkel’s policies for the development of a program of video analyt=
ic
research within the learning sciences). In R. Goldman, R. Pea, B. Ba=
rron
& S. Derry (Eds.), Video resear=
ch in
the learning sciences. That document adhered more closely to the
terminology of ethnomethodology (Garfin=
kel,
1967); my
co-authors are not responsible for the liberties taken in re-interpreting t=
heir
ideas here. After so much email-mediated collaboration on the text—let
alone the influences of the sources indexed or the effects of re-situating =
the
argument in the context of this book—it is no longer possible to
attribute most of the ideas to any one author, and this chapter should
particularly be considered a product of group cognition, although my
co-thinkers would reject many of the formulations in this text. =
The
distinction of five perspectives (returned to in chapter 21) originated in a
talk I gave at ISCRAT ‘02 in Amsterdam
on Understanding educational
computational artifacts across community boundaries. (Most of the rest =
of
that talk was presented in chapter 12).
Ideas f=
or
this chapter were previously published as: Stahl, G. (2005) Group cognition: The collaborative locus of agenc=
y in
CSCL. =
Plenary=
paper
presented at the international conference on Computer-Supported Collaborati=
ve
Learning (CSCL ‘05), Taipei, Taiwan.
Comments by anonymous reviewers for CSCL 2005 prompted minor clarifications=
in
this and the next chapter.
Previously published as: Stahl, G. (2003). Keynote
talk: The future of computer support for learning: An American/German DeLFIc
vision. In A. Bode, J. Desel, S. Rathmeyer, M.
Wessner (Eds.), DeLFI 2003, Tagungs=
band
der 1. e-Learning Fachtagung Informatik, 16.-18.
September 2003 in Garching bei München. 13-16.=
I began=
to
explore these themes on the occasion of a keynote talk that opened the first
German computer science conference on e-learning, DeLFI 2003 in Munich. Discussion=
s of
other chapters from part III with Rupert Wegerif at the Kaleidoscope CSCL
Symposium 2004 in Lausanne and with Sten
Ludvigsen and his colleagues at InterMedia in Oslo pushed me to extend the considerat=
ions. Translations
of the Heidegger and Marx quotations have been taken from my philosophy
dissertation (Stahl,
1975a), where=
they
are discussed more thoroughly.
Previou=
sly
published as: Stahl, G. (2004) Thinking at the =
group
unit of analysis. Paper presented at the CSCL-Sig Symposium of
Kaleidoscope, Lausanne, Switzerland.
This ch=
apter
is based on a paper delivered at the first Symposium of the CSCL Sig of the
Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence of the European Union, in October 2004. =
It
was the final paper presentation there and was well received. Versions of t=
hat
talk were also presented at Drexel University in Philadelphi=
a,
Knowledge Media
Research Center
in Tübingen, Intermedia in Oslo, Fraunhofer-FIT near Bonn.
The analysis of the chat excerpt was subsequently extended with help from A=
lan
Zemel and his conversation analysis seminar at the VMT project. The VMT pro=
ject
is supported in part by grants from NSF.
&n=
bsp;
This bo=
ok
benefited in numerous ways from my collaborators at the VMT project and Drexel University
while I assembled and refined the text. They provided essential feedback,
continuous stimulation and new insights. The series editors and the press s=
taff
also gently steered the book’s evolution in helpful ways. David Tietj=
en
read the entire manuscript and improved its details. Despite all this help,=
the
book retains a variety of flaws—these are solely my contribution.
&n=
bsp;
&n=
bsp;