A comparative analysis of understanding practices in

the VMT environment:

A brief introduction to the Virtual Math Teams

Gerry Stahl

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VMT: 2003 -->

Design-based research evolves the technology with the pedagogy, methods of analysis, usage feedback from data analysis, and theory

From off-the-shelf AOL Instant Messenger to multi-modal environment

From Math Forum “problem-of-the-week” to four-hour open-ended math mini-world

From one-shot chats to Spring Fest sessions to mini-curricula

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Spring Fest 2005, 2006, 2007 and others by collaborators, in my courses, misc trials

Over 2,000 student-hours of data (576 sessions)

From a multi-dimensional coding scheme to Conversation Analysis

Almost 200 academic research publications Preliminary explorations: Group Cognition;

Early Studies: Studying Virtual Math Teams Now preparing to go live from research

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The VMT Lobby

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The VMT Chat Environment

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The VMT Tabbed Environment

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The VMT Wiki

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The VMT Replayer

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Spring Fest 2006 math topic

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5. Some Initial Findings Problem solving discourse is driven by

proposal/response interactions (Stahl, RPTEL, 2006) Groups construct a joint problem space through

interactions that involve temporality, positioning and knowledge artifacts (Sarmiento, ICLS, 2008)

VMT participants intricately coordinate visual, narrative & symbolic reasoning/inscriptions (Cakir, Zemel & Stahl, ijCSCL, 2009)

Information questioning proceeds through interaction to elaborate what is sought (Zhou, SVMT, 2009)

Groups construct an indexical field that lends contextual meaning to elliptical utterances (Stahl, Koschmann, Zemel, ICCE, 2009)

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5. Some More Initial Findings (Medina, Suthers, Vatrapu, SVMT, 2009) uptake

analysis of methods in VMT (Wee & Looi, SVMT, 2009) model of threading (Powell, et al., SVMT, 2009) co-construction of

math reasoning (Fuks, et al., SVMT, 2009) avoiding chat confusion (Trausan, et al., SVMT, 2009) polyphony of

discourse (Rose, et al., SVMT, 2009) agent support for VMT (Shumar & Charles, SVMT, 2009) group agency

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For Further Information

Wiki: http://ijcscl.org/wiki/DiscussionThreeB Group Cognition (2006, MIT Press) Studying Virtual Math Teams (2009, Springer)

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Anna Sfard “I found the material fascinating if only because it is quite different

from face-to-face interactions I have been analyzing so far. The analyses I started doing are going in several directions:

* Collective construction of mathematical objects in the conditions of only limited visual mediation (no gestures, for example); this is related to the issue of creativity and collective discursive innovation;

* The flow of leadership in discourse (here, I would like to elaborate on the idea of communicational agreement which I developed while studying conditions for meta-level learning; in the present case, no meta-level learning is expected; rather, we are witnessing object-level activities of combining existing mathematical objects and of formulating and substantiating narratives about these objects; this, I suppose, requires a special version of communicational agreement, yet to be defined and investigated);

* A related topic that nevertheless deserves separate work: finding criteria for evaluating degree of collaborativity and the mechanisms that make collaboration (a) possible and (b) effective.

“I truly regret not to be able to come to Rhodes.”

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A Comparative Analysis of Understanding Practices in the VMT

Environment 1. Presentation by Timothy Koschmann, Gerry

Stahl and Alan Zemel 2. Presentation by Christian Greiffenhagen &

Jacqueline Eke 3. Presentation by Daniel Suthers, Richard

Medina & Ravikirian Vatrapu 4. Discussant by Graham Button 5. Audience discussion