ED-MEDIA 1999 Proceedings Book - Association for the ...

Evaluating collaborative telelearning scenarios:
A sociocultural perspective
Frode Guribye & Barbara Wasson
Department of Information Science
University of Bergen
N-5020 Bergen, NORWAY
Frode.Guribye@ifi.uib.no Barbara.Wasson@ifi.uib.no
Introduction
In this paper we discuss work in progress by describing the conceptual framework we are using to identify patterns of
collaboration in collaborative telelearning scenarios within the Norwegian project DoCTA [1]. Project DoCTA focuses on
the design and use of artefacts in collaborative telelearning scenarios aimed at teacher training. Various scenarios utilising
the Internet are used to engage the students in collaborative learning activities. An ongoing exploratory study is analysing
four different scenarios.
In the first scenario, a pilot study is analysing the use of Teamwave Workplace [2] for collaborative activities in a graduate
university course [3] at the University of Bergen (UiB). The next two scenarios involve European inter-cultural simulations
where the goal is to design a textual artefact (such as a treaty or policy statement). In IDEELS [4] teams of Norwegian
students at UiB and Nord-Trøndelag College (HiNT) collaborate with teams in Germany, Spain and France to develop a
treaty. In Demeter [5] Parliament, Norwegian students at Stord/Haugesund College (Stord) collaborate with students from 13
countries to contribute solutions to contemporary problems facing the European community. In VisArt, a fourth scenario
being designed, developed and deployed for use between Norwegian educational institutions, the goal is to design a visual
artefact to be used in teaching a subject of choice. In this scenario, teams will comprise students from the three Norwegian
participating educational institutions (UiB, HiNT and Stord).
Collaboration Patterns
From a research perspective, the exploratory study being carried out within DoCTA will provide us with insight into the
processes of collaboration enabling us to identify collaboration patterns and further our understanding of how instructors,
students and other learning facilitators organise their learning and work.
The community of study includes teachers, learners and facilitators participating in the various collaborative telelearning
scenarios. The main research question has been formulated to ask how these students, teachers and facilitators organise their
learning and work given the different scenarios. The four collaborative telelearning scenarios vary with respect to:
• actor characteristics (e.g., within a common community vs. disparate and divergent cultural backgrounds; similar
knowledge and preparation vs. different knowledge and preparation; etc.),
• aspects of the learning activity (e.g., text based vs. visually based; well-defined learning tasks and goals vs. illstructured
tasks and goals; etc.),
• the kinds of artefacts they have access to (e.g., the artefacts provided in the various internet environments[6]), and
• the kinds of artefacts they are to design (e.g., textual or visual)
Conceptual approach
The underlying conceptual framework adopted in this research is taken from three different, although closely interrelated
approaches, namely: activity theory (Leontev, 1978, Engeström 1987), distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995), and situated
action (Suchman, 1987, Lave, 1988, Mantovani, 1996). One of the goals of this research is to argue that, together, these
approaches make up a rich framework for describing, evaluating and analysing collaborative telelearning scenarios. All three
approaches underscore the need to look at real activities in real situations (Nardi, 1996, our italics), and always, in some
way, include the context in studies of human activity.
The rationale for combining these three approaches as the conceptual foundation of this study, is that they all fall under what
is called a sociocultural perspective (Wertsch, del Río & Alvarez, 1995), that highlights learning and thinking as
phenomenon that can not be studied in isolation. Rather, they are complex processes situated or distributed in an
[1] http://www.ifi.uib.no/docta/
[3] http://www.ifi.uib.no/staff/barbara/courses/host98.html
[4] http://ftp.uni-bremen.de/wwwgast/fzhb/ideels/public_html/index.html
[5] http://hugin.hsh.no/prosjekt/demeter/index.htm
[6] E.g., in IDEELS the artefacts they have access to include their own email system, Teamwave Workplace, and OPUSi a
web-based conferencing system developed at the University of Bremen, Germany.