October 2007 Volume 10 Number 4 - Educational Technology ...

“according to Salomon it is exactly these differences that makes collaboration work…to use each others
competence and pull something useful of these competencies through collaboration.”
From a sociocultural research perspective the student’s own reflections are a very important part of evaluation and as
illustrated in the previous excerpts they demonstrated an ability to reflect theoretically on practice. The research
reports they submitted in the course held comments and reflections that were both thoughtful and insightful and will
lead to improvements in future versions of the scenario.
From an ethnographic flavoured study looking at how students organized their work in VisArt, Andreassen (2001)
used different qualitative data gathering techniques from a variety of data sources, ranging from electronically
collected TW chat logs to transcribed informal interviews. The data analysis dealt with aspects like co-ordination,
communication mode, division of labour, and feedback. During the entire scenario the students met regularly in TW,
and co-ordinated their actions by using TW or email. Sometimes both TW and email were used as a means of coordination,
providing a form of double communication. This form of communication disappeared as the scenario
went on, maybe as a result of the establishment of regular meetings and patterns for collaboration. The task decision
marked a noticeable line of demarcation in the communication mode. Before deciding on the task the rate of
synchronous meetings and communication were higher than after the decision had been made. The asynchronous
nature of the post decision work, may have its root both in the fact that the need for synchronous meetings were
diminished, and that each student was assigned her/his own area of responsibility, contributing to a co-operative,
rather than a collaborative form of work. In spite of a mutual agreement on providing feedback on each other’s work,
this hardly ever occurred. Time pressure and a feeling that one had to concentrate on what oneself was doing, are
probably the main reasons for the lack of feedback.
Collaboration patterns define sequences of interaction among members of a team (such as students). In the VisArt
scenario we have searched for collaboration patterns by analysing interaction data from data logs, videotapes,
observations, and interviews both between students and between students and facilitators (instructors and assistants).
We have identified several instances that we believe can be characterised as collaboration patterns (Wasson &
Mørch, 2000):
Adaptation: This pattern describes how students gradually adapted to each other’s practices when working together
to solve a common problem.
Coordinated desynchronisation: This pattern describes how coordination of activities between team members
changes after they have identified a common goal.
Constructive commenting: This pattern describes commenting behaviour. Comments that are neutral (e.g., just to the
point) are perceived to be less useful than comments that are also constructive (e.g., suggesting what to do next) or
supportive (e.g., encouraging).
Informal language: This pattern describes how interaction often starts in a formalistic style and gradually becomes
more informal as team members get to know each other. Frequent use of slang words or dialects local to the
community working together is common in instances of this pattern.
Collaboration patterns are useful for the re(design) of the learning scenario. For example, in the initial phases of a
collaboration effort, a sort of double communication might occur; more than one tool is used to inform other team
members about a changed meeting time. This type of adaptation pattern was observed in VisArt and lead to
inefficiencies. This sort of communication may be reduced or disappear with improved technical understanding or
changed work coordination over time, but might be avoided with sufficient training and examples on how different
tools can be used for coordination purposes.
Our general findings in DoCTA 1 include:
• the ease of use of the many collaborative tools tells us that the technological problems are no longer the prime
issue in CSCL design
• the main issues are related to the broader institutional contexts in which the tools are designed and used
• coordination issues remain a challenge for collaboration with distributed learners
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