backup:adfs::0.$.chap8
8th November 1993
CHAPTER 8: Collaborative interactions *around* and *through* computers
What is typically suggested by the phrase "collaborative learning"?
Probably the image of individuals gathered together at some materials
that they are trying to understand. Naturally, from time to time such
individuals may drift into solitary reflection. However, to qualify
as a genuinely collaborative interaction, we normally expect there to
be an underlying common focus for attention. In the last Chapter, I
illustrated an approach to analysing such occasions. The analysis
highlighted varieties of social coordination that might be achieved at
these focal points. It explored the natural concern of collaborators
to construct common understandings and shared systems of reference.
The analysis also evaluated problem solving environments in terms of
how far they promote or undermine such efforts. Computers may
sometimes be effective environments for learning in this sense;
sometimes they are not. However, the localised and interactive
properties of this technology do suggest that it has a special
potential for resourcing the social construction of shared knowledge.
Yet, our spontaneous image of collaborative learning as involving a
gathering *at* problem solving materials may be too narrow. As
Landow has put it: 'I suspect that most peoples' conception of
collaborative work takes the form of two or more scientists,
songwriters or the like continually conferring as they pursue a
project in the same place at the same time' (Landow, 1990, p. 407).
This conception is too limiting. In the present chapter, I wish to
discuss two broader configurations for the organisation of
collaborative interactions. They both entail a reconsideration of
what defines a shared problem solving environment. In particular, I
shall discuss circumstances in which collaborations may be dislocated
in time - the participants do not need to be co-present. And I shall
discuss circumstances in which the participants have less
comprehensively overlapping concerns - where the problems that they
are each addressing are more loosely coupled. These represent,
respectively, central features of interacting "through" computers and
interacting "around" them.
INTERACTING AROUND COMPUTERS
Of all the educational arrangements whereby new technology might
support collaborative activity, this is the one that has attracted
least research or commentary. Regretfully, I shall not report new
empirical material here that helps fill this gap. Instead, I shall
identify the questions that need to be addressed and argue that they
are interesting and worth research investment.
Exactly what belongs under this heading can be approached by
reflecting very generally on the material nature of learning
environments. For example, Walkerdine (1984) has drawn attention
to the typical environment of a primary school classroom. Once one
has stepped back from this familiar setting, it becomes possible to
see a variety of constraints and supports that are literally built
into it. Chairs and desks are oriented into characteristic patterns;
walls are decorated with particular material; areas of the room are
furnished in ways that afford defined possibilities for acting. In
short, the very fabric of the place is designed to manage the business
of learning according to distinctive ideas about good practice. It is
typical of socio-cultural theorising to dwell upon the manner in which
environments serve to mediate cognitive activity. As reviewed in
Chapter 2, this theoretical tradition understands cognition in terms
of a human subject located in relation to mediational means. In
respect of schooling, this approach will consider how local
mediational means can resource pupils with particular interpretative
practices. Accordingly, one way socio-cultural theory should direct
research on new technology is towards investigating options for
integrating computers into this "fabric" of the educational
environment.
The present Chapter addresses such a concern. This section of the
Chapter does so in relation to those configurations of computers
*around* which social interaction may be organised. In clarifying the
idea of such configurations, the above example of the classroom fabric
is helpful. It raises a concern for the material setting of
collaborative encounters, and it encourages us to think about them
very broadly. The example leads us beyond considering only the
familiar case of collaborating by intimately working together *at*
some location or artefact. For the design of classrooms vividly
illustrates the principle that material environments will constrain
and facilitate a whole range of social interactions that can occur
within them. So, the structure in some particular environment may
influence all sorts of collaborative engagements that we may be party
to. A sensitivity to such ecological considerations could guide
decisions about the optimal deployment of new technology. For it
should suggest a constant need to consider how any particular
technology (say, computers) is best incorporated into some established
material environment (say, a classroom), such that it becomes an
effective component within the very fabric of working practice.
As I commented at the outset, the issue of how to locate computers
within the material environment of schools has not been closely
studied. In practice, the choices may seem rather restricted. In
primary schools there is still too little equipment. So, to ensure
equable access and to encourage its use in all aspects of a
curriculum, the preference has been to distribute computers evenly
across classes. Where some mobility of equipment is possible, this
policy may allow creating short term pockets of extra access: such
that a class might enjoy a more intensive period of computer activity.
There has been very little attraction to the idea of concentrating
computers in circumscribed work areas.
Secondary schools, on the other hand, have been more likely to
configure computers into clusters that occupy distinct areas -
"computer rooms" perhaps. Sometimes these are networked and in some
schools that network may run through more of the premises (I shall
discuss these arrangements further in later Sections of this Chapter).
It is the particular case of grouping together computers to support
parallel patterns of working that interests me here. This
configuration creates the possibility of what I term "collaborative
interactions *around* computers".
To a casual observer, these areas can lead classrooms to look more
like working environments from the world outside of school. In fact,
it is more in relation to social practices in the workplace that these
arrangements for new technology have attracted some research
attention. Such interest has been partly inspired by new perspectives
within the tradition of "human-computer interaction" (HCI) research.
These involve challenging the prevailing concern of HCI researchers to
study the solitary user - as if the character of human-computer
interaction could be understood independently of the broader cultural
setting within which interactions get situated. These new
perspectives are well captured in a seminal collection of papers
edited by Norman and Draper (1986). This volume includes an essay by
Bannon (1986) in which the issue of a computer system's communicative
effectiveness is seen to involve consideration of the niche it
occupies in a context of existing working practices. So, for example,
the familiar problem of users failing to read computer application
manuals is understood in terms of tensions with established and
preferred modes of acquiring knowledge of this general kind. These, it
is argued, are often socially organised: knowledge gets sought and
exchanged with other people - on the fly. In many working
environments there is a rich but informal pattern of casual
communication that supports this. Studies of how new technology is
implemented at work tend to stress a need to respect such structures
(Huber, 1990; Olson and Lucas, 1982).
Many of us will recognise the force of this description from our
own experience of working environments. It is less recognisable as a
description of working patterns within classrooms. Sometimes, this
may be because classrooms impose some prohibition on such
communication - identifying it as "cheating" perhaps. However,
sometimes a lack of such communication among students may reflect
constraints inherent in the arrangements, materials and goals of
working. There may be grounds for thinking that some configuration of
computer systems can release a richer exchange in classroom settings.
A project reported by Kafai and Harel (1991) raises this possibility.
The work of these researchers does concern the support of
collaboration among pupils. However, they distinguish the scope
of their own interest in processes of collaboration from that entailed
in a more 'conventional' use of the term. The conventional
understanding, they argue, will involve two or more individuals
working towards a *single* product. In the situations documented by
Kafai and Harel, there is a layer of joint activity that is
superimposed upon individual work or conventional collaborations.
What this amounts to is the existence of an umbrella goal that a whole
class will be sharing; the goal is realised by individuals or small
groups producing their own distinctive products in relation to that
shared goal. In fact, the particular example Kafai and Harel describe
is an "Instructional Software Design Project" (ISDP): thus, the
umbrella goal becomes 'to use LogoWriter [an authoring tool] to design
a piece of software that teaches about fractions - but each of them
also expresses his or her own ideas and produces his or her own
project' (op. cit., p.87). The style of working then encouraged is
one that permits what they term 'Optional Collaboration' (choosing to
work alone or with others) and 'Flexible Collaboration' (deciding with
whom to work, when and for what purpose).
It is argued that the way in which computers are integrated into the
classroom environment serves to make these working practices realistic
and successful. In the ISDP project, the computers were organised
into circles with a great deal of freedom of movement and obvious
opportunities to take in what peers were doing. This arrangement
seemed to support what the researchers termed 'collaboration through
the air'. This corresponds to something like the patterns of exchange
typical of the corridors and coffee rooms of many traditional
workplaces. Kafai and Harel describe a number of case studies that
identify children gaining from the loosely-knit communication that the
setting readily affords.
Valuable though these observations are, I believe that more needs to
be done to characterise the social dynamic that is involved.
The nature of this alternative collaborative structure is defined
above in terms of the existence of an umbrella goal. But this is
hardly a distinctive feature: it may also characterise other routine
circumstances arranged in conventional classrooms. Children are often
working on such shared, overarching goals: they are, as a class,
writing project descriptions, making maps, and so on. Moreover, the
open-plan character of many British schools does encourage some degree
of lateral communication within a classroom. So, what must be
clarified is how far the possibilities for creative, through-the-air
collaboration are extended because of the particular properties of
working around computers. I think it is likely that computers are a
powerful context in this sense. Moreover, the source of their
strength may lie in a referential anchoring capability: a capability
of the very kind discussed in the last chapter in relation to more
conventional collaborations.
This analysis assumes that the constraints on collaborating through
the air arise from the "air" normally being too thinly resourced:
there are not usually enough available anchor points at which action
and attention can be coordinated. Loose communication can often
flourish in workplaces because the collaborators there are frequently
drawing upon a richly articulated body of mutual knowledge. This is
an inter-mental achievement; it will have developed over a long
history of interconnected communications. School work is less
likely to be easily grounded in this way. The immediate concerns of
school work are rarely situated within such intimate and evolving
understandings. Instead, schools create problems that are much more
localised and much less easily related to some prevailing and shared
set of institutional purposes. However, where school problems are
explored in the medium of new technology, then collaborators may be
better provided with referential anchors for the development of their
shared interests. For they will be pursuing their various goals with
overlapping sets of tools; these tools will be visible and manipulable
as a common point of reference; their mechanics will provide a
sensible vocabulary that a pupil confidently can use with any
collaborator who has had experience with the same resources.
In summary, I am not suggesting that configuring computers into
classroom clusters is necessarily the ideal way to arrange them.
There may be other institutional factors that dictate other
possibilities. In particular, there is a valid concern that
too rigid a separation of computers into their own rooms serves to
identify them with a curiously dislocated and special class of
activity (Chandler, 1992). Yet, however such organisational decisions
are made they should include some sensitivity to the issue of how
different working arrangements can afford different possibilities for
collaboration. These possibilities are not confined to the case of
small groups working *at* computers, and as already discussed here.
There is a level of community-based collaboration that can arise where
class activities are more loosely-coupled. Nevertheless, in both
kinds of situations the technology may be serving to support
collaboration by providing strong points of shared reference. A
similar claim can be developed for the networking of computers - a
strategy that is sometimes adopted as an alternative to the clustering
discussed here. I shall turn to this strategy next.
INTERACTING THROUGH COMPUTERS: A UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY
The key issue introduced in the last chapter has arisen again. That
issue concerns how we may resource the constructing of a shared object
of understanding. In many circumstances recognition of this "object"
will arise from a common concern to make progress with some
self-contained task (such as writing a story, or scoring high on a
number puzzle). The activity takes place, together, at the
site of the problem. However, in the configurations to be discussed
in this Section, the form of a shared understanding may sometimes be
less tightly related to some such circumscribed problem. What it is
that comes to be held in common - that becomes a source of shared
reference - is more a set of broader intellectual practices. So, I
shall be partly interested here in how new technology can mediate
forms of activity that create *communities* of shared understanding.
Understandings that are held in common need not be exclusively
relevant to the short term goals of working together on localised
problems. There are circumstances where mutual knowledge provides a
general underpinning relevant to a whole range of collaborative
encounters: this arises in situations where people are held together
into communities that share a common set of concerns - such as might
sometimes arise within institutionalised education.
In this Section, I intend to sketch the nature of network
configurations in general and, then, consider the particular
implications of networking for educational practice. I shall pursue
the educational theme by reporting an example of network-based
innovation with which I have a close involvement: an initiative
directed at an undergraduate population. This will enable me to make
a number of points about collaborative structures mediated *through*
computers. Some of these points I shall take up later to consider
their significance for practices in the earlier years of education
will be discussed.
The nature and application of distributed computing
For a long time, the popular representation of computer use was that
of a user occupied at a self-contained machine. This may still
capture well enough the domestic experience of this technology.
However, in institutional settings, it is increasingly likely that the
user will be occupied at a machine that is less isolated: it is likely
to have connections to other computers at other locations. Equipment
that is linked together in this fashion is said to be networked.
Local area networks (LANs) allow communication within the premises of
some workplace. Wide area networking (WAN) involves links with
geographically very remote computing systems. The original attraction
of such connectivity was to permit a large number of individual
computers (network stations) to gain shared access to a central
resource of data (a file server). Quite simply, this centralisation
offered a saving on the amount of computer hardware required for data
storage. It also allowed central administration of those
data facilities that members of an organisation might wish to share.
However, the design of networks has become more sophisticated in
recent years. The model of a central file server passively delivering
data to connected stations as they request it is now a fairly
primitive conception of networking. The modern concept of
"distributed computing" identifies a more dynamic environment.
"Servers" in such environments can themselves be very powerful. They
can take responsibility for some of a user's computational needs - as
well as delivering files that might be accessible to the computational
resources of that user's own network station. This has led one
company active in this area to adopt the commercial slogan: "The
network *is* the computer". Certainly, at any moment, exactly where
the computing is taking place can be well hidden from a typical user
of a distributed computing network.
These configurations of computers might have evolved originally to
achieve straightforward economies of resource. As such, they might
have been seen as merely extending and optimising the computing power
available to some community of solitary users. However, it has become
clear that these arrangements have significant implications for
patterns of coordination among those users themselves. A widely-cited
example is that of the ARPAnet - a pioneering US defence network,
originally conceived to distribute computing power among the research
community. It quickly became apparent that this network unexpectedly
was supporting a great deal of interpersonal coordination.
Researchers were finding their needs for collaborative contacts were
being increasingly mediated by a person-to-person connectivity
made possible by file transfer over the net. Newell and Sproull
(1982) provide an early summary of how research communities
appropriated this technology for such purposes.
Network configurations permit two key procedures: the transport of
files between users and the controlled access to data files held
centrally. Network-based collaboration is then made possible by tools
and structures that elaborate these core capabilities. Files become
objects that a community of users may view, share, and transform
through the use of these tools - much as they might manipulate
resources in the material (non-computed) world of collaborating. More
recently, networks have also permitted the direct transmission of voice
and video: thereby, allowing more vivid communication between remote
users, as well as their coordinated exchange and manipulation of data
structures.
For our present interests, it is not important (and probably not
possible) to establish a rigorous taxonomy of the supporting structures
that have been documented for communication within networked
environments. However, certain broad distinctions and themes are
useful to identify, particularly as they relate to developments within
educational settings. One class of widely-used resource stresses
structures for interpersonal exchange. These more generic tools
permit text-based communication on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis.
The best-known example is electronic mail (email) which allows a user
to compose text messages at a network station. A mailer program can
then be instructed to transfer them immediately to the file space of
some remote user(s) - who will activate their own mailer to read,
reply or forward the material. Increasingly, it is now possible to
incorporate sound and visual images into these messages. A variant on
this pattern is the electronic bulletin board, whereby material may be
posted in a central file space that can be widely read by users within
some networked community. This structure has, in turn, been
elaborated in the form of so-called "conferencing programs". These
allow orchestrated discussions by imposing topic structures on
text entry (and, sometimes, a moderating mechanism). Users may write
their own entries into a free space within this structure: the effect
is to create threads of contributions. Participation in these
computer conferences may come to resemble the experience of a seminar
or workshop interaction.
Other network resources are tailored to supporting interactions with
more circumscribed purposes. That is, they may impose greater
structure on a group interaction and/or offer more specialist tools
for manipulating material of joint interest. Such software is
sometimes termed "groupware" and useful characterisations of the genre
can be found elsewhere: particularly, within reviews by Ellis, Gibbs
and Rein (1991) and by Johansen (1988). Naturally, the emergence of
this software has encouraged associated research enterprises concerned
with its impact in organisational settings. Thus, there is now an
active community of researchers studying the general phenomenon of
computer-mediated communication (Lea, 1992) and the more particular
circumstances of "Computer-supported Cooperative Work" (Bowers and
Benford, 1991; Grieff ,1988). There is also an active interest in how
the culture of organisations can be effected by the penetration of
computer-mediated communications (Rice, 1992).
Many of these networking developments have indeed penetrated a variety
of workplaces (Collins, 1986; Malone and Rockart, 1991). Commercial
contexts, rather than educational ones, now provide the real stimulus
for creating new resources. Educationalists can take advantage of
these developments, although not all the structures developed for
commercial purposes are relevant to the needs of education. For
example, in the commercial sector there is much interest in Group
Decision Support Systems (Vogel and Nunamaker, 1990), some of which
may be fashioned for networked environments. But, framing and
converging on "decisions" is less central to the concerns of
educational practice, and tools that help students do this may of
limited application outside specialised problem solving exercises.
So, the network-based structures that have been of most interest in
teaching settings are these. (1) Resources that support interpersonal
exchange and debate, particularly email and conferencing.
Institutions that service non-residential students who might be widely
dispersed have made the most effective use of these tools to support
their "distance education" (Harasim, 1990; Mason and Kaye, 1989). (2)
Information servers. These are programs offering individual users
easy access to database collections of files relevant to some
curriculum or organisational structure. These files may be located
within some menu-style screen environment and then examined copied or
printed by students. (3) Co-authoring tools. These allow two or more
users to jointly edit or create documents in an asynchronous manner
(Landow, 1990).
Most educational initiatives exploiting these structures have been
concentrated in the University sector. I shall briefly review their
progress later in this Section. First, we might note certain findings
that have emerged from more workplace-oriented research: these may
provide some pointers regarding what can be expected in educational
contexts. A recurring proposition is that network-supported
communications is potentially subversive: it can challenge existing
procedures that maintain a social order within some organisation.
Perhaps for this reason, the implementation of groupware-based
practices are not always successful. Thus, in reviewing this mixed
progress, Grudin (1990) comments '...a medium which allows widely
separated people to aggregate their needs is, in fact, quite
frightening' (p. 181). In general, organisations may be slow to
respond to these structural possibilities. Yates (1989) locates
innovations of the kind being discussed here in a broader historical
context. He notes that few management technologies were ever adopted
when they were invented, but only when shifts in management theory
made the possible applications more apparent. He comments: 'Real
gains await innovative thinking about the underlying managerial
issues' (Yates, 1989, p. 275). This may be a common fate for all new
media (Winston, 1986). SO, by the same token, we may assume that
these new technologies of communication will not easily penetrate and
transform established practices within the organisations of education:
this is already implicit in the historical review of teaching and
technology authored by Cuban (1986).
A further recurring claim about communication in networked commercial
environments is that the exchanges supported become deregulated or
uninhibited (Hesse, Werner and Altman, 1988; Sproull and Keisler,
1986). It is widely believed that this arises from the lack of social
cues that can be conveyed in text-dominated and asynchronous
communication. However, some commentators have questioned whether
this medium is really so impoverished in terms of its social texture.
Lea, O'Shea, Fung and Spears (1992) argue that uninhibited exchanges
are quite rare in computer-mediated communication: they may simply be
more memorable and visible in this text-based, archival context.
Moreover, they accept that interpersonal social cues are necessarily
minimal in this medium; but suggest that users make active regulatory
use of social identities as given by other kinds of cues - text
and format cues that specify affiliations to various social
categories. It is uncertain, therefore, how this medium might
influence the style of communication in educational settings.
However, it is clear that educational settings have traditionally
respected hierarchical structures of authority; whether or not these
become somewhat flattened by computer-mediated communication will be
one outcome of interest.
The most optimistic message to be derived from studies of workplace
communication through computers is that it loosens up patterns of
exchange within an organisation (Malone and Rockart, 1991): this may
support more creative coordinations. However, simply putting
network-based structures in place is not enough to ensure that real
transformation of communication practices ensues. This has often been
observed for the case of email (Carasik and Grantham, 1988; Eveland
and Bikson, 1986). We may heed Bannon's warning (1986) that the
success of innovation within some setting will depend upon innovators
proceeding with a sensitivity to the informal system of rules and
procedures that already govern working practices. I will consider
this more closely in the educational context of Universities - the
teaching institutions where collaboration through computers has been
most actively considered.
Computer-mediated communication in undergraduate education
There is much to be worried about regarding the manner in which
universities are being encouraged to deploy new technology (eg.,
Hague, 1991); however, it is unfortunate that critics (eg., Robbins
and Webster, 1985) are led to wholesale rejections of new technology
in this sector before its potential for supporting more collaborative
opportunities has been fully explored. This is a direction for
computer-based innovation that has yet to be properly explored and
judged. When the application of computers to university teaching is
discussed, it is curious how little attention is given to distributed
computing; and curious how slow educational practitioners have been to
recognise the relevance of networking to the support of collaborative
practices.
For example, in a recent collection of papers summarising IT-based
teaching innovation in various UK universities (Gardner and McBride,
1990), there is no mention of networks as a teaching resource.
Similarly, Darby (1991) does not include communication infrastructures
in his review of future needs - when reflecting on the outcomes and
implications of a UK initiative to promote computers in university
teaching. Hale (1990) describes an example of a computer-rich
teaching department: yet this model does not incorporate communication
considerations. Part of the reticence on this matter may arise from
not being able to see networks as offering anything more radical than
a passive file serving mechanism. For example, Kay's recent review of
networks in higher education converges on the recurrent theme of more
efficient information delivery: '..pervasively networked computers
will soon become a universal library' (Kay, 1991, p. 106). Gardner
(1989) may have a similar vision of the "electronic campus" when he
concludes: 'There is at the moment no irrefutable series of arguments
which demonstrates that electronic campuses are necessarily better
places for staff or students.' (1989, p.348). Unfortunately, it is
hard to promote convincing arguments when there are so few model
systems to refer to.
As it happens, an educational interest in network infrastructures is
more active in North America. Thus, some campuses there have made
considerable investments in distributed computing for teaching:
notably, Carnegie-Mellon University (Hansen, 1988) and MIT (Stewart,
1989). Technical and academic strategy within the major US
initiatives has been summarised in a review by Issacs (1989). Issacs'
review indicates that networks often only service a fairly traditional
teaching strategy: they deliver computer-aided learning packages to
students at workstations. However, it is also apparent that these
computing environments, to some extent, have made possible new and
imaginative forms of coordination within their respective communities.
Some of these possibilities have been reviewed in more detail by
others. In particular, Kiesler and Sproull (1987) have published a
volume of essays describing the impact of networking at
Carnegie-Mellon. Their commentary suggests that the computing
infrastructure is transforming patterns of communication within the
campus community.
At first glance, this might seem likely and desirable: electronic mail
opens up otherwise sluggish lines of communication, course material
can be made widely accessible when and where it is needed, student
assignments can be transferred within this medium - and so on. Hiltz
(1990) has evaluated four courses intensively run in this way, with
most of the communication managed by electronic distance teaching
methods. These 'virtual classrooms' are favourably judged by students
who report a greater sense of participation and more access to the
course tutors. However, some caution is necessary: the student
constituency was self-selected, Hiltz indicates access to computing
resources has to be very good and considerable commitment is required
from staff and students to master the new tools. Final grade scores
were no better or worse than controls. Other reports of successful
classes suggest a similarly mixed picture. Philips and Santaro (1989)
describe the experience of running four parallel speech communication
classes that made extensive use of electronic mail and bulletin board
systems. The system was heavily used, the course ratings high, and
the outcomes good. Yet, engagement was localised: a third of the
class made extensive use of the computing resources while 20% barely
used them at all. The mainframe computer system at its core was
somewhat cumbersome and this may have made workloads high. Evidently,
the usability of systems will be relevant to the progress of these
initiatives. Although, in the present case, it is reasonable to
suppose that the distribution of course engagement was at least what
one would expect from more traditional teaching methods.
These initiatives are slow to spread. Indeed there are numerous
commentaries suggesting opposition to developments of this kind. Hiltz
and Meinke (1989) indicate that their virtual classroom provoked
'active resistance' from many faculty members. McCreary describes the
University of Guelph's long-standing commitment to using computer
conferencing and notes that its adoption has not been pervasive. In
particular, there is a lack of presence on the system of senior
members of the community. Komsky (1991) describes efforts in one
university to deploy email for more administrative purposes,
commenting: 'Despite a high degree of computer literacy and frequent
use of computing for other applications, these faculty have been
unwilling to alter their existing communication patterns to include
electronic mail.' (p.311). So, where faculty (or students) are not so
computer literate, we can presume the resistance will be greater
still. Moreover, that obstacle is not easy to anticipate. Stewart
(1989) indicates that resistance has been evident even at MIT where
'technical blood flowing through their veins' has not ensured that
members of this community would be active computer users.
Of course, all of these cautions are made from within traditional
university settings. Where the student constituency is more
geographically dispersed, then it is likely that computer-mediated
communication will be particularly successful. There is some
indication that such success is possible (Harasim, 1990; Mason and
Kaye, 1989). The UK Open University is one of the largest and most
experienced distance teaching institutions in higher education. It
has reported some success with computer conferencing (Mason, 1989).
However, the success was for students taking a technology course
and the conferencing resource has yet to spread further into the
University's teaching program. Moreover, there are indications that
such course-related communication may not always be experienced as a
liberating opportunity for equable student participation. Grint's
(1992) report of a small group of users indicates that the resource
was not necessarily radical for them in this way. Partly, he argues,
the difficulties arise because student participation depends upon a
community 'solidarity', and that is not easily created within the
medium.
Yet, in terms of our present theme of "collaboration", this is very
much the quality of experience that it is hoped interacting *through*
computers can furnish. Here, I am hoping that communicative
activities pursued through this technology might create for
learners new forms of mutual knowledge. Such achievements could then
underpin further collaboratively developed understandings: much as
interacting *at* computers and interacting *around* them might. My
brief review of developments within the present university community
suggests that computer infrastructures do not yet have a significant
role in teaching and learning practices. This may reflect a lack of
faith and funding from policy makers. It may reflect interfaces to
the technology that are still too cumbersome or students who, in any
case, are still uncomfortable using computers. It may reflect a
failure to achieve critical masses of participation within the
community.
There is one further consideration relevant to making such initiatives
work; it concerns the institutional level at which network-supported
practice is organised. In North American Universities, network
structures may be generic resources oriented to the campus community
as a whole. It is then possible for these resources to be
appropriated into particular teaching units where they are adapted to
local needs. Thus, the *course* becomes the level for organising
interactions through this technology (cf. Barrett and Paradis, 1988;
Hiltz and Meinke, 1989; Kinkead, 1987; Landow, 1990; Philips and
Santoro, 1989). In Britain, the natural unit of organisation may be
the *department*. This is because most administration assumes that
individual students have strong affiliations to such an academic body
- sometimes, in the case of combined degrees, they may have more than
one such affiliation. Evidently, modularisation of courses (currently
underway) is likely to loosen these kinds of link. Perhaps this is
all the more reason to be contemplating new strategies for sustaining
them under such pressure. Many students will continue to pursue study
plans that focus on a circumscribed academic subject: yet the options
of modular structures may serve to undermine their sense of
association with a fixed cohort of peers pursuing a common set of
goals. While, computer-mediated communications may well be conceived
to meet the typically course-focused needs of these students, perhaps
it might also help recover some of their sense of involvement in a
larger academic community.
I will describe below a case study that is organised at this level.
It is unusual in that it represents a consensual effort to create
structures for interacting through computers at the level of a whole
teaching department. The observations are also interesting, as they
cover a period during which all other circumstances of the department
were stable. Moreover, this was a lengthy period (5 years) and thus
conclusions are not subject to the limitations of "snapshot" research:
observers of electronic communications in office settings have
cautioned against drawing conclusions from brief accounts relating
only to the early period of innovation (Rice, Grant, Schmitz and
Torobin, 1990). Space does not permit a full description of this
project and - as it is my own department - I will rely, to some
extent, on participant observations. However, the exercise should be
adequate to make some general points about the problems and
possibilities of collaborative structures realised in this network
context.
University case study: context and implementation
The observations that follow refer to a medium size university
department teaching Psychology students entirely on its own premises.
These students come from both Arts and Science backgrounds. The group
of interest here are those combined cohorts of 40 or so students who,
in any of the years of a three-year course, are registered for an
Honours degree in Psychology. Each such group was recruited into a
networked communication structure during their second year of study;
other undergraduates taking various combined degrees involving a
component of Psychology could also make use of the network resources
but they experienced less organised encouragement to do so. The
exercise also involved all academic staff, a small technical staff
(around 7 people) and a postgraduate and research community (around 15
people at any one time). My remarks here cover a 5-year period
(1986-1991) where circumstances were notably stable. So, the core
curriculum and teaching strategy in the Department happened not to be
altered during this time. Student numbers remained level and the
computing infrastructure itself did not change in fundamental ways.
Moreover, academic staffing remained constant (9 lecturers) with only
one (temporary) appointment changing during this period.
It seemed to the staff in this Department that Durham provided an
attractive context to explore network-based resources at the
departmental level. Even in 1986, Durham enjoyed a well-developed
computing infrastructure. This partly arose from the University's
involvement in a regional consortium that had taken early steps to
promote campus-wide, multi-user services. These were based around the
innovative and powerful operating system, MTS. Thus, access to a
central service was very widely available: in libraries, in
departments, from telephone dial-up services, and in student
residences. The strongly residential character of Durham (70% of
undergraduates live in college-style accommodation) was significant in
several respects. It ensured that most undergraduates would have
residence-based access to network resources. However, it also defined
part of the reason these resources were thought educationally
valuable. A strongly residential student community leads students to
make their colleges the organising setting for social life.
Departmental staff tend to note that this can undermine the ease with
which shared academic interest catalyses student relations - and,
perhaps, gets explored within them. For example, 40 final year
Psychology students would be evenly dispersed across a dozen
residential settings (and some would live in private accommodation).
This offers most of them a rich social life, but usually not one that
exploits common academic commitments. In 1986, an unannounced poll of
the Psychology students assembled for final year registration,
revealed that, on looking round the room, the average student could
only identify by name half a dozen peers from this common academic
cohort.
In 1986, this department needed to upgrade computing equipment that
supported teaching. The decision was made to invest in 30 new
connections into the University network. Terminal access would then
be available to all staff and there could be generous facilities in
public spaces for students. It should be stressed that these
innovations were achieved within the normal budgetary framework for
teaching support: I am describing relatively low-technology
innovations within the reach of many university departments - should
they so chose. However, as is widely appreciated in commercial
settings (eg., Strassman, 1985), the real initial investment is not
usually concentrated in hardware provision, but in handling the human
issues of introducing a set of new working practices. The present
example was not unusual in needing what McCreary (1990) terms a
'diffusion manager' - someone taking responsibility for drawing
members of the community into acting within this medium. This was a
role that I partly took upon myself and, therefore, can comment the
implementation process from a close association with it.
Interactive communication media are vulnerable to start-up problems:
where there is less than universal participation at the outset, this
usually imposes a high cost and lower benefits for those who do take
part. Markus (1987) has analysed this paradox and highlighted the
problems of creating an early critical mass. Success appears to
depend upon a small group of key users making a disproportionate
contribution - perhaps making themselves more openly available than
would otherwise be the case. In the present example, the teaching
staff could be said to have made this gesture in respect of the larger
community of students. Of course, these staff themselves have to
arrive at their motivation. The present situation may have been
unusual in that these particular individuals would be guided by
pedagogic commitment and, perhaps, by theoretical curiosity. This
might not so easily drive such an initiative in other academic
contexts. It might even suggest social science departments as likely
innovators in this area (Hiltz and Meinke's (1989) virtual classroom
was for sociology students and, at Durham, the one department so far
to have reproduced our own strategy is Sociology). Yet, the diffusion
manager in this case did find it necessary to create network
facilities that staff could not otherwise easily enjoy: in particular,
easy access to software for statistical analysis as well as central
printing facilities that improved on what was locally available.
Moreover, key administrators in the department made regular use of
electronic mail for management purposes.
Managing the involvement of students was in some respects easier. It
was seeded by building a requirement of usage into their coursework.
This was not shamelessly manipulative: these students had always been
required to learn the use of a statistical analysis program. All the
necessary resources for that exercise were located in the same
computer environment as the communication facilities under
consideration here. They were introduced in parallel early in the
students' second year. Also, a potentially prescriptive atmosphere
was, in a small way, defused by introducing a number of frivolous
resources (cf. Marvin, 1983). These included on-line jokes, a
database of student events, and randomly selected humorous items
delivered when signing off. Students also benefited by having
unrestricted access to a full screen text editor and printing
facilities which many of them were able to use for basic word
processing. Keyboard skills was a further need that had to be
met: typing-tutor programs were made available at workstations and a
professional instructor took a voluntary class in the department.
Even after 10 years of computers being in schools, it should not be
expected that contemporary undergraduates will find learning the
basic use of a new system easy or agreeable. A computer attitude
scale (Stevenson, 1986) was completed by all these students at the
start of each year. This instrument comprised 20 statements requiring
endorsements on a 5-point scale from "strongly agree" through
"undecided" to "strongly disagree". Figure 8.1 indicates that a
similar pattern of responding was reproduced in each generation. If
anything, the course-based experience of a networked environment is
correlated with a gradual softening of attitudes towards using
computers. Yet, it is noticeable that there remains a significant
unease over using this technology. The survey included supplementary
questions probing particular experiences that students felt were
associated with negative or positive feelings about using computers.
The most commonly cited category of negative experience concerned
feelings of being less competent than others or feeling resentment
over having had inadequate opportunities to gain expertise during
their education. Ironically, the second most commonly cited problem
related to bad experiences of being taught about technology in
previous contexts.
----------------- Insert Figure 8.1 about here -----------
There has remained a significant minority of students (around 15%) who
seem seriously intimidated by this technology and feel very reluctant
to use it regularly. Typically, they have mastered the small number
of basic actions that provide them with teaching-related material
through this medium (elaborated below). On the other hand, the
overall picture of usage suggests a buoyant situation. The use of
selected local commands (including signing on to the service) was
recorded in a system log file. To ensure anonymity, this data was
directed into a Computer Centre account and the identity of particular
users hidden - although their status as individual representatives of
a particular student or staff cohort was coded. Figure 8.2 summarises
the extent of system usage over this period - in terms of average
number of weekly log-ons by teaching staff, by second year and by
third year students. All teaching staff became and remained active
users of the network. So, it would be normal for them to log into
this system more than once a day. Student use is also active with
most students logging-on three or four times a week.
------------------ Insert Figure 8.2 about here ---------------
There were three kinds of network-based resource relevant to the
support of collaborative interactions. I shall define them briefly
before saying more about the fate of each in practice. (1) Electronic
mail furnished a tool for interpersonal communication. It also
supported communication to groups. Over 50 such group aliases were
defined. These mainly related to the various teaching units -
seminars and practicals, taught option courses, and so forth. Thus,
rapid person-to-person and person-to-group communication became
possible. (2) An information server was written to collate and
distribute documents relevant to teaching, administration and research
within the department. A menu-driven interface allowed users to
converge on files classified under such headings; they could then
view, copy or print this material. (3) Such common access to files
also allows more interactive structures. The concept of computer
conferencing mentioned earlier is a case in point. In the present
environment, a program ("Forum") was available that allowed the
creation of a conference (for example, it might concern a particular
taught course) and, then, the development of "topics" (conversational
strands) falling under that heading. Users could add their own
written contributions to a developing exchange. A simpler program
("Intray") was also written to allow self-defined groups of
individuals to share access to a single file. In some ways this
resembled an electronic mail program. On running the utility, a user
would see a list of files to which they currently had shared access.
Any one could be selected through menu-style reference and, then,
edited or printed. When signing on to the network, a message would
indicate whether any such shared file had recently been updated.
Observations below on the fate of these resources is based upon three
kinds of information. Firstly, some system-level programming allowed
usage statistics to be gathered. Secondly, student reaction was
polled at various times through interview and written accounting.
Thirdly, staff recounted their experiences informally to myself under
periodic questioning as a record of network activity was developed. I
shall also draw upon my own experiences as a participant who may have
been especially active in promoting network resources for
collaborative purposes - arising from a professional interest in their
value. The social-psychological distinctions I wish to make do not
map cleanly onto the system resources as summarised above. I shall
review the experience in terms of varieties of collaborative
arrangement - each of which might involve some mix of these tools.
Computer-mediated discourse
Under this heading I am considering how communications *through*
computers can support collaborations that stress interpersonal
exchanges. So, the resources of interest are those that help
reproduce the opportunities of that discourse typically enjoyed in
face-to-face discussion. Evidently, electronic mail is of special
interest. It provides an accessible means of communication that can be
referred to at times that suit individual users. Computer
conferencing provides a further framework for the support of
text-based discussion. However, in the present case, conferencing can
be dealt with quite quickly: it never proved a resource that could be
sustained. Part of the problem may have arisen from a user interface
that many people found cumbersome. However, even when thorough
preparation had been ensured and where it was formally built into the
work of project groups, it did not prove a popular or effective
resource.
The experience with electronic mail makes an interesting contrast.
There are two important differences to note. One is that using the
mailer program was never felt to be as difficult. The other is that
electronic mail *was* widely used and widely appreciated. In annual
surveys at the end of each academic year, students reliably cited mail
as the most engaging network resource. During the first two years of
this initiative, the mailer happened to deliver unusual levels of
feedback to the senders of messages. Thus, it could be determined, at
any given time, who had seen a particular message. When a message was
sent to a group, this feedback was listed for all its members. By
sampling such group-directed mail that happened to be sent by myself,
it became possible to estimate the typical delay between sending an
item and it being widely read within some target constituency. I
performed such calculations in terms of "working hours" - assuming a 9
am until 5 pm day - for a message to have been read by at least half
the receiving group. During the second year of the project this
message half-life was 2 hours for lecturing staff and 10 hours for
students. The point I wish to emphasise is that these statistics,
along with student feedback on the attractions of email, indicate that
the resource was accessible and effective (see also Figure 8.2). We
might therefore expect it to be widely used for tutorial exchanges.
Indeed, staff anxiously expected this. At the outset of this
initiative, lecturing staff were invited to write brief declarations
of how they expected the use of networking resources to enter into
department life (these kept sealed and only examined very recently).
A common concern was that electronic mail would open up a flood of
student contact that would be difficult to manage.
In understanding the network-based practices that have actually
evolved, there are other background observations that are relevant.
These concern the extent to which this community already supported
strong traditions of interpersonal collaboration - in the form of talk
between staff and students and talk among students themselves. These
traditions were sampled in two ways. Firstly, academic staff kept
daily diaries during three one-week periods just before the networking
initiative was launched. In these diaries, staff availability and
contact with students and colleagues was logged. Secondly, the extent
of student collaboration was assessed with an unannounced survey of
how one particular piece of coursework was managed.
Staff diaries summarised the opportunities that students would
normally expect for informal advisory contacts - and the extent to
which such opportunities were taken. The pattern of statistics was
very even across staff. When time allocated to formal teaching,
official meetings, and research-related absences are subtracted, an
average of 4.7 (range 3 - 6.8) hours per day remained as time during
which lecturers were potentially "available". Undergraduates claimed
a relatively small proportion of this time. 17% of it was absorbed in
meetings with other individuals; 12% of it was taken up by
undergraduates. This was enjoyed by a daily average of 2.9 students;
around half of which were students being supervised in specialist
project work by that member of staff. Moreover, for most staff this
number was made up of a significant core of individuals seen quite
regularly (usually in relation to their supervised projects). These
statistics suggest substantial opportunities for staff-student
tutorial contact, but relatively modest uptake. The same picture
emerges if we approach the question from a more student-centred
perspective.
The student-focussed exercise considered the natural history of one
substantial piece of coursework required towards the middle of the
second year course. This work was associated with fortnightly
staff-led seminars, each involving about 6 students. The work set may
have varied between groups but was to be submitted at the same time.
At the submission meeting, students completed an anonymous
questionnaire concerning the scheduling and support of this piece of
work. The assignment needed to be done within a 12-14 day time frame,
but it would have been the only written work required in that period.
It was assessed but the mark did not count towards degrees. For
present purposes, I only wish to comment on the collaborative
relations that might support this work. My point is that a project of
this kind was typically a solitary achievement. 72% of the students
had no further conversation with their tutor in relation to the
assignment. And 62% had no discussion with their peers. Moreover, of
those that did, three quarters commented that these conversations were
"very brief" or "cursory". The relative lack of collaborative
engagement with peers is supported by a survey of study time
allocation carried out within the same class. Students reported only
1% of their study involved discussions with peers, and over 75% of the
class claimed no time at all invested in this form of learning.
Hounsell's (1987) study of undergraduate practices of essay writing
endorses these findings: he also discovers 'no substantive discussion
of essay writing amongst peers' (p.113)
I am dwelling on this background context of working practices because
it aids interpreting the subsequent impact of computer-based
communication media. In general terms, a description of the present
initiative might be helpful in suggesting likely outcomes elsewhere;
but only if the present local circumstances are fairly fully
articulated for purposes of comparison (not because those
circumstances are "typical"). In this spirit, there is one further
dimension of this situation to comment upon. That is, the traditions
of communication within this setting as they were interpreted by the
students themselves. To get some sense of this, 10 final year
students were randomly chosen and approached to keep a reflective (but
anonymous) record of their learning and interactions across this year.
They were encouraged to be alert to attitudes among their peers and
incorporate these impressions into an accounting of student
experiences as they perceived them. At the outset the terms of
reference were fully discussed and organised in relation to a number
of open-ended, orienting questions concerning: 'activities' (the
processes of study), 'contexts' (the locations and resources for
study), and 'people' (relations with staff and peers). The exercise
generated 10 accounts, each around 2000 words in length.
The features of these accounts that are most relevant to present
concerns are those about which there was most unanimity. Firstly, it
was widely claimed that the course was engaging and respected.
Secondly, staff were regarded as approachable and the social
atmosphere relaxed:
Student C: Generally, staff are pretty accessible: one merely knocks
on their door...many members of staff are only too pleased to help out
with questions.
Student E: Students feel fairly few pressures compared to other
students in different departments mainly due to the fact that the
staff are fairly accommodating and understanding.
Thirdly, although less widely identified, it was remarked that
discussion among students was limited. Where this was claimed to
occur it was often expressed in terms of students monitoring
their peers: to check that they were themselves "keeping up", or to
confirm that others were experiencing similar classes of difficulties
and pressures. Some students identified the need for some kind of
formal structure that could promote what they perceived as a
shortfall:
Student A: While Psychology is a fascinating subject, very few
students actually sit around amongst themselves and talk about
it...so, people need timetabled tutorials in which to talk about
Psychology.
Student C: The lack of communication between psychology students is
depressing. Somehow, discussion about the course "outside of hours"
as it were should be encouraged. Perhaps Psychology students should
only be accepted by certain colleges, thereby creating a hard core of
psychologists with increased opportunities for communication.
Student perception of the collaborative nature of their learning seems
in keeping with the formal sampling of this described earlier. Their
reference here to limited study-centred peer interaction is consistent
with those observations. However, their sense of an accessible and
"collaborative" staff might seem less consistent. The diaries and
student work summaries have suggested that, in reality, a relatively
small number of students have tutorial contact with staff outside of
formal teaching settings. Of course, there may be no real
inconsistency here. Students may detect a receptive teaching culture
and yet chose not to take advantage of it by initiating frequent
collaborative conversations.
There are good reasons to expect that electronic mail between
students and staff might flourish in such a setting. For one thing,
email has been widely described as a communication medium that causes
users to be less inhibited. This may facilitate exchange in
educational contexts where there are perceived status differences.
Keisler, Siegel and McGuire (1984) have noted its effectiveness in
this sense with undergraduates. Some commentators (Turner, 1988)
have even expressed concern at an excessive loosening of manners that
the medium can encourage among university users. However, our own
experience has not been one of electronic mail radically altering
patterns of communication. This conclusion arises from summary
accounts elicited from staff, sampling of individual student mail use,
and more detailed participant records of my own.
All teaching staff took part in a lengthy interview one year into the
present period. The topics for discussion were circulated in advance,
responses were noted during the interview, and summarising accounts of
these confirmed or negotiated later. There was universal agreement
that the network resources had been a great asset. Several staff
commented that they could not remember how they managed previously;
others remarked they had not at first appreciated the significance of
the initiative and had been surprised at how effective the facilities
were. Also, they all agreed that electronic mail was a significant
advantage in support of their teaching. However, the reasons cited
for this all concerned opportunities for contacting students -
delivering course material, inviting meetings, cancelling meetings,
calling in missing books and so forth. No staff admitted to
participating in anything like tutorial exchanges over this medium.
The most widely cited examples of student-to-staff academic queries
related to the supervision of individual practical projects. My own
detailed records of mail to and from students echo these reports
across the five year period discussed here (and beyond). In every
year, mail relating to these final year projects outnumber all other
incoming student mail. Even then, they are relatively scarce: in an
average year they amounted to nine messages from a typical yearly
group of five students. Almost all other incoming mail took the form
of two-turn exchanges. These arise within the context of some
particular academic contract (usually a recently required piece of
work): I can only trace six items that are context-free academic
inquiries - such as might arise as reactions to a particular lecture
or reading.
Thus, the summary picture from staff describes a pattern of
communication very similar to that already apparent in their diaries
of informal face-to-face student contact. There are relatively few
unsolicited queries and much of the communication grows out of more
sustained and personalised obligations associated with supervising
specialist practical work. Six final year students who kept logs of
their own mail confirm this pattern. The student with the largest
number of outgoing email items to staff reported 25: most of which
where brief administrative matters. All reported more outgoing
mail to other students and more incoming mail from staff. A small
amount of student-to-student mail (on average around 6 items in the
year) were course-related. However, it is clear that the availability
of this medium does not transform or greatly amplify existing patterns
of collaborative communication. This is true even in circumstances
where the need for greater staff and peer collaboration is acknowledge
and even after the following operating conditions have been satisfied:
(i) a reasonable period of network institutionalisation has occurred,
(ii) electronic mail has become familiar, regularly used and
appreciated, (iii) the freedom to approach staff and peers in this way
has been well advertised.
For these reasons, I am inclined to view unstructured use of
electronic mail as a rather limited resource for extending the
collaborative experience of learning - at least, within the
traditional culture of British department-based teaching. Arguably,
it is too cumbersome ever to suit tutorial-type dialogue and
conceptions of computer-mediated communications in education surely
need to look beyond this simple analogy. Only in distance teaching
contexts might this tutorial application make sense (Cf. Verdun and
Clark, 1990). Electronic mail remains useful to coordinate other
activities, including scheduling face-to-face meetings. And it
*could* be useful for student-driven, two-turn exchanges that might
not otherwise occur. That this tends not to happen reflects a need to
refashion other aspects of the culture of teaching and learning:
electronic mail does not seem, by itself, to create new conditions for
empowering such collaboration.
Network structures for joint activity
One enthusiast for computer-mediated communications in education
comments: 'Knowledge is not something that is "delivered" to students
in this process, but something that emerges from active dialogue among
those who seek to understand and apply concepts and techniques'
(Hiltz, 1990, p. 135). Many such innovators properly wish to
dissociate themselves from 'delivery' models of educational practice,
fostering instead opportunities for participation in educational
discourse. Yet, it may be optimistic to assume that new arenas of
dialogue will naturally open once the electronic infrastructure and
tools are in place. Certain persuasive studies within distance
teaching settings might encourage this belief. However, empowering
collaborative practices within more traditional cultures of teaching
and learning may require going beyond simply giving access to these
new conversational tools. Productive educational dialogue usually
depends upon a previous investment: a background of more carefully
cultivated social practices. So, in the end, the challenge for
developing collaborative interactions *through* computers may be one
of re-mediating established practices: using these tools to
transform existing forums of socially-organised teaching and learning.
Once such new structures are discovered, then they may motivate
activity within the dialogue-supporting devices we have been
discussing above. The purpose of this section is briefly to elaborate
this argument.
I will mention two exercises carried out within the context of my own
teaching. They each made use of network resources to structure a
traditional activity in a more collaborative fashion. Neither
depended centrally on the dialogue functions of electronic mail and,
thus, they take us beyond the examples of the preceding section. The
first example concerns support for the management of written
assignments. The second concerns student-led discussion groups. They
illustrate something of what is possible, but they also illustrate an
optimistic assumption that new structures can be easily bolted on to
existing learning practices.
To introduce the first, I shall return to the exercise described
above, in which students were confronted with an inquiry to
characterise the natural history of an assignment they had just
completed. I commented earlier on the solitary nature of this work.
The other striking outcome was poor time management. This might have
been anticipated, as student procrastination is a well documented
problem (eg., Silver and Sabini, 1981). The present exercise required
a breakdown of the work in terms of time spent on preparatory reading,
drafting and final writing; students described how these activities
were distributed across the two-week period. Two particular
observations are worth highlighting. (i) The proportion of time given
to preparing plans and drafting was relatively small (around 15%) and
(ii) most work on the assignment was concentrated in the latter part
of the available period. Thus, 65% of the work was done within the
last four days and 20% was done within the final 24 hours. Only a
fifth of the students had given the work any attention at all within
the first week of the allotted time. Arguably this is a problem of
procrastination rather than lack of commitment. On average, ten hours
was spent preparing these essays: this is a fairly generous investment
in absolute terms, the problem is that its distribution across the
available period is skewed.
I suspect the underlying pattern of management endorses Hounsell's
conclusions from an interview study of essay writing among history and
psychology students:
...there was no substantive peer discussion and communication from
tutors to students appeared to be largely formal, post hoc, product
oriented and limited in scope. Essay writing thus appeared to be a
central assessment activity but a peripheral pedagogical one.
(Hounsell, 1987, p.118)
The situation invites, among other possibilities, more imaginative
support from tutors, and support that encourages more effective use of
preparatory time. The writing of an assignment might become a
collaborative activity, if procedures could be instituted to draw
tutors into the writing *process* (rather than them only entering at
the end as commentators on the *product*). Evidently this does not
happen spontaneously: observations made above on tutor-student
contact indicate that students do not seek out such involvement.
Neither does technology greatly assist by offering an accessible and
legitimate new communication medium (electronic mail). The problem
seems to require establishing a recognised (and economical)
collaborative practice: some set of procedures whereby joint
involvement in the preparing and planning of work becomes possible.
This might require the construction of a more accessible object of
shared reference than might be naturally achieved within a brief
face-to-face (or computer-mediated) tutorial dialogue. Participation
in a networked computing environment might make this possible.
My own exploration of this possibility involved two teaching forums.
The first was the same assignment-requiring seminar referred to above
when discussing student procrastination. Students were asked to
produce a first plan for their written assignment during the following
week. This could then be developed iteratively within further
exchanges, if that seemed useful. The exercise either used electronic
mail or the Intray file-sharing program. Perhaps such a procedure
could be effected with reference to paper drafts, but its management
would be more difficult. Collaborating through the computer network
means that the task can be turned around very promptly and editing
facilities mean that comments can be effectively interleaved into
existing text. This affords something more like a dialogue in
relation to the topic under development. Moreover, when the time
comes to discuss the finished product (as might occur in a seminar
meeting), participants will have a richer understanding of the nature
of that product through shared access to its conception.
Such procedures work, up to a point: the medium supports the activity
and it does not seem to over-stretch a tutor's commitment. Yet, the
collaboration is hard to precipitate and hard to sustain. Of course,
other tutors might do so more skilfully and more successfully.
However, I suspect that there is more to the problem than this.
Additional effort is required to identify procedures that could be
effective: procedures that make sensible contact with existing work
practices and, yet, can then act to enrich or extend them. In this
case, formalising the development of an essay in successive text
drafts was accessible and useful for some students, but unfamiliar and
awkward for others. The discrepancy in reaction makes it more
difficult to sustain the initiative: for the culture of seminar groups
tends to encourage procedures that *all* members can appropriate.
However, the obstacles may be substantial. To consider this, I have
implemented the same procedure with different operating circumstances.
In particular, I have encouraged computer-mediated dialogue around
text plans for a final year assignment that was part of formal degree
assessment. Thus, this work was important; and because the completed
assignments were blind marked and the class was large (35), there
should be limited fear of tutor prejudices carrying over from planning
dialogues to influence ultimate assessments. Yet, whenever it has
been instituted, this procedure has never attracted more than one or
two collaborating engagements. Moreover, passing the responsibility
to a postgraduate assistant - who might be less threatening - makes no
significant difference.
One of these postgraduates raised this topic during interviews with
randomly selected students following completion of their degree.
From the transcripts, it became clear that the assignment was taken
seriously. It was also regarded positively (coursework assessment for
degrees being unusual in the Department). Procrastination was
frequently cited as a problem: to submit material for discussion close
to the deadline was seen as only exposing one's own inefficiency. A
further problem was simple lack of exposure to an interaction of this
kind. These students were one year further into their undergraduate
education than those described above: procedures for collaborative
interaction around the development of an assignment were still more
unexpected and unfamiliar. Thus, the networked environment does offer
a resource for this possibility and, for a small number of people, it
can be effective. But, for the majority, more preparatory effort has
to be invested in making such structures work. The *collaborative*
involvement of tutors and students in ways other than
institutionalised discussion forums (seminars) remains unfamiliar.
I will outline a second collaborative structure that is more
student-centred and which also suggests a similar conclusion:
networks furnish real possibilities for new structures but they may be
hard to launch as *widespread* practices. This case case concerns 35
or so students taking an optional course in their third year. The
class is semi-formal; partly, because it incorporates one hour each
week when small (self-selected) groups within the class take
responsibility for leading a discussion. Encouragement is given for
students to exploit these groupings as a basis for creating their own
structures of mutual support. This rarely happens. The interviews
with graduating students mentioned above confirm this. However, I am
aware of two such groupings that did sustain such activity, and that
did draw upon collaborative support through the computer
infrastructure. These groups enjoyed regular meetings at which a
nominated scribe summarised what they had discussed and understood.
These were mailed to the tutor (or placed in a shared Intray file) and
became the potential target of some further dialogue - either within
that file or at other times when the participants (and, perhaps, the
tutor) met.
What is notable is that the experience was very potent for those
participants. But, also, this venture was notable for being unusual:
few students easily adopt this manner of collaborating. I have
highlighted the examples above to stress two points. (1) The computer
network does suggest novel structures through which collaborations can
be supported: the networked technology furnishes a resource that helps
build up productive shared understandings. (2) The promise of such a
resource can only be assessed in relation to a background culture of
collaborative practices. This is merely to stress that, when deployed
within traditional undergraduate settings, the technology is
unlikely to function like a magic bullet.
Yet it *can* be subversive in these settings. So, other colleagues in
this Department recently have reported localised successes in using
the computer network to support small group collaborations within
their advanced (third year) teaching forums. What seems to help
precipitate this are ingredients not included in the relatively
unstructured initiatives described above: there may need to be a
degree of enforced group responsibility and also a well-specified
purpose or goal. Then, it is more likely that the shared computer
space will emerge to offer a valuable repository for group-based
understandings, and it is possible that these can become an authentic
part of common knowledge.
Participatory structures
Bruner (1991, p.3) quotes Nobel prizewinner Harriet Zuckerman as
suggesting that the chances of winning the prise increase immeasurably
if one has worked in the laboratory of somebody who has done so
themselves. With this observation, we are alerted to the significance
of cultural contexts for learning. This requires us to think from yet
another perspective about the technological resourcing of
collaborative structures. In discussing interactions *through*
computers, I have touched on possibilities that reproduce some of what
happens during interactions together *at* problems. Thus, electronic
mail might support the creation of shared understandings through
affording approximations to conversational dialogue. I have also
discussed possibilities involving more diffuse collaborative
structures: in particular, possibilities based upon using a common
computer space to maintain (asynchronously) certain documents that can
become shared objects of reference. Under the umbrella of
"participatory structures", I wish to introduce the idea that
interactions through this technology might be relevant to supporting
cultures for learning - in the sense that Bruner (and others) identify
them. In this case, more overarching shared frameworks of
understanding are generated; accessing these frameworks may help
create platforms from which new understandings get collaboratively
negotiated.
Theorising in the socio-cultural tradition recently has been
influenced by anthropologists who describe informal settings for
learning. Lave (1988), in particular, has studied such settings;
thereby conceptualising teaching and learning in terms of learners
encountering activity within 'communities of practice'. Such social
structures, it is argued, relate very broadly to educational agendas:
'Even in cases where a fixed doctrine is transmitted, the ability of a
community to reproduce itself through the training process derives not
from the doctrine, but from maintenance of certain modes of
coparticipation in which it is embedded' (Lave and Wenger, 1991,
p.16). Such a perspective has encouraged interest in apprenticeship
relationships. However, Lave cautions that the master-apprentice
terminology should not become a disguise for traditional teacher-pupil
organisations. Instead, she toys with an alternative vocabulary that
dwells more on the fabric of social relations and their its role in
transforming persons and practices. For example:
Newcomers develop a changing understanding of practice over time from
improvised opportunities to participate peripherally in ongoing
activities of the community. Knowledgeable skill is encompassed in
the process of assuming an identity as a practitioner, of becoming
a full participant, an oldtimer. (Lave, 1991, p.68)
I believe this vocabulary is helpful for thinking about the conditions
of undergraduate learning. The present influence of psychological
theory on University education is rather limited (Laurillard, 1987;
Saljo, 1987). It sometimes surfaces in a concern to cultivate in
students more effective "study skills". Yet, research suggests that
such skills can not be abstracted and taught independently of subject
content or meaningful contexts (Ramsden, Beswick and Bowden, 1987). A
more useful theoretical perspective may be one that considers the
nature of students' engagement with the practice of their discipline.
This issue concerns the participant structure of learning as it might
be created within, say, a university department. Our particular
interest here is whether technological resources can contribute to
enriching such structures.
What might this involve in the current example of a Psychology
department? It must involve some kind of exposure to the *doing* of
Psychology - an encounter with the subject in a context where it is in
progress. Fifty years ago, Lewin was stressing that learning is most
effective when pursued collaboratively within communities of practice.
He argued that watchmakers becoming carpenters involves more than
them learning how to use certain tools: it involves coming to swear
like carpenters, to walk, eat, and see the world from the carpenter's
point of view (Lewin and Grabbe, 1945). In an undergraduate context,
this might be achieved, in part, by a certain simulation of the
discipline's professional routines. It is tempting to demand of
students scaled-down versions of professional practices: such as
research reports, conference-type presentations, traditions of peer
commentary and so forth. Yet, the most potent learning experiences
may arise from opportunities to witness the art, values, tricks and
vision of practitioners as they actively engage in the subject.
Exposure to this culture affords newcomers a chance of 'legitimate
peripheral participation' (Lave and Wenger, 1991). It might allow
them to approach the status of oldtimers 'through a social process of
increasingly centripetal participation, which depends upon legitimate
access to ongoing community practice' (Lave, 1991, p.68).
I believe that considering the management of communication structures
within an educational setting will play some small part in
transforming it into an accessible 'community of practice'. There are
some pointers to be drawn from the undergraduate example that has been
discussed in the present section - although, admittedly, they are
modest. One network-based resource that relates to this purpose is
the information server: the tool that collates and distributes
documents relevant to the life of the department. Teaching material
is one category of material that dominates this database. At a
superficial level, it is valuable to students as a repository of their
course-related documents. In the final weeks of the period described
here, there was an average of 900 accesses to this database per week.
However, the availability of this resource has done more than merely
duplicate existing paper-based operations. In particular, it has
lead some staff to incorporate novel material that would not
previously have been in circulation: their own lecture notes for
example, or (anonymous, and with approval) examples of previous
student approaches to tackling some topic of mutual interest. An
incidental effect of this is to create a more vivid birds-eye view of
departmental activity. This is achieved partly because the material
is centralised in a format shared by all users and partly because it
is topical and detailed in a way that traditional handbook summaries
are not.
One feature of usage that became clear from system logs was that
users consulted entries that were not relevant to their own
course-related study needs (this observation includes staff - some
of whom were active in cross-checking the curricula of their peers).
It was hoped that this curiosity among student users could be deflected
towards aspects of the department's activity less centrally related to
the undergraduate syllabus. Thus, the database came to include
material relating to research activity, recent publications, the
administration of the department, new library and equipment purchases,
minutes from staff (and staff-student) committee meetings, and so
forth.
This exercise in opening up windows onto departmental life is cited,
as with several other examples in this case study, to illustrate a
principle: namely, that of linking computer-based structures to
collaborative purposes. Thus, in the present case there may be a real
possibility of drawing individuals towards a closer appreciation of
the life of the department, as defined by its core concern with the
practice of Psychology. However, in reality, these materials
peripheral to the official syllabus have attracted very little student
attention. Again, the existence of such access does not, of itself,
create a new level of engagement with the local culture of the
discipline.
Undergraduate network: concluding comments
The departmental case study sketched above illustrates three senses in
which collaborations may be supported by interactions *through*
computers. They all relate to joint concerns that are relatively
dislocated in time and space: collaborators are not co-present in the
familiar sense. Firstly, computer networks may facilitate some of the
dialogue-based processes that are a traditional part of forming shared
understandings: electronic mail is the most accessible tool to help
achieve this. Secondly, access to shared file space may resource the
creation of useful objects of shared reference: I have discussed the
example of staff and students collaborating on the conception of a
traditional assignment, and also the example of a tutor's
computer-mediated involvement with the products of student-led
discussion groups. Thirdly, collaboration may be resourced more at
the level of very loosely-coupled shared interests and understandings.
This is a matter of electronic media creating for learners a greater
sense of awareness of overlapping purposes and a greater sense of
participation in a community of practice.
In relation to this final sense of collaborative support, it would be
naive to hope that investing in computer networking infrastructures
naturally met these needs. It is certainly possible that they could
undermine them instead. For example, electronic communication could
be deployed to obstruct the circumstances of joint understanding, it
could comprehensively displace rich interpersonal communication and
render relationships more remote. This has certainly not happened in
the quite long experience of the present case study. Yet, it is also
clear that widespread participation in the present initiative has not
had a productively transforming effect on collaborative structures
either.
The important lesson of the example may relate to the *potential* of
computer-mediated communications when implicated in such
transformations. In the present case, I believe it has become clear
that much needs to be done in terms of confronting the limited culture
of collaboration that students bring to their undergraduate
experience. There is also much to be done at the level of
facilitating a richer intersubjectivity between the learners in this
situation and the tutors with whom an effective collaborative
relationship needs to be built. This is true even in a setting that
students may rate as relatively successful in this respect. In the
following section I make some brief observations regarding related
initiatives at much earlier stages of education. The cautionary
observations of a sociologist discussing electronic media in schools
may serve to link the above discussion and the one that follows:
...the professional optimists confuse community and communication.
What they forget or affect to forget is that communication is the
expression of a will, of a will to be or live together, which almost
invariably pre-exists it. In one sense, it is the community which
precedes communication and not the reverse, even if communication
may eventually reinforce the community. (Balle, 1991, p.107)
INTERACTING THROUGH COMPUTERS: A PRIMARY SCHOOL COMMUNITY
Networks may have been slow to penetrate teaching within undergraduate
contexts; they have made still less impact on practice in the earlier
stages of education. Yet, I believe the forms of collaborative
interactions made possible by interacting through this medium also
hold promise for younger learners. Again, my discussion will be
dominated by personal experience with one particular model system. I
shall draw on this to suggest ways in which computer networking may
underpin valuable collaborative structures in early education. The
discussion in this Section will be shorter, as many points generally
relevant to this form of activity have been introduced above.
Moreover, the case study to be discussed is still in a relatively
early stage of development.
In the first section below, I shall review the status of networking
structures within early education. Then I shall move on to describe
particular possibilities for practice as revealed in one primary
school setting. The discussion will focus on collaborations as they
might evolve in relation to children's early experience of writing.
Computer networking in early education
Few educational commentators have considered how the networking of
computers in schools can support innovative teaching and learning.
Handbook reviews rarely mention networking (eg., Salomon, 1989; Smith,
1989). A significant European conference on information
technology and schools gave no serious consideration to network
infrastructures (Eraut, 1991). Where they are considered, it is often
in terms of configuring an isolated room to create a more efficient
file serving mechanism (Henderson and Maddux, 1988). The schools
that do have networks are almost always in the secondary sector and
their networking is almost always clustered into a circumscribed space
- rather than integral to the school (Wellington, 1987).
Yet, in both primary and secondary settings, there has been an
attraction to the broad idea of collaborative interactions *through*
this medium. Curiously, it has inspired communication initiatives of
a different kind to those pursued in the universities. In schools,
interest has started from communication over wider areas - links made
outside of the school itself. In universities (as reviewed above),
the communication structures have been more at the local level. Thus,
in the school system there has been some lively exploration of
cross-site communication, but relatively little interest in local
structures of computer communication. While in universities, there
has been more interest in the local level and virtually no exploration
of cross-site links. Universities have been well enough equipped to
follow either route. While schools, in choosing to foster remote
communications, arguably have chosen the route with more cumbersome
technical demands. Their commitment may reflect traditional concerns
to challenge the often too-insulated nature of pupils' school
experience.
Communicating through computers to other institutions is made possible
if a school has a modem. This is a device allowing some computer to
be linked to a telephone line and, thereby, to exchange files with a
remote site similarly equipped. In practice, the usability of such a
link depends upon access to certain software tools that organise and
direct such communication. For this reason, early projects often
called upon university contacts to mediate the link - thus allowing
access to electronic mailers. These more effectively formatted and
targeted the files transmitted. More recently, commercial concerns
have acted to occupy this mediating role. In Britain, a news company
has launched the "Times Network for Schools": for an annual
subscription, this offers electronic mail as well as conferencing and
bulletin boards (Wellington, 1987). In North America, AT&T have
supported the development of a comparable resource aimed at schools
(Reil, 1990).
An early and influential exercise based around cross-site
communication was reported by Levin, Reil, Rowe and Boruta (1985).
Their rationale was to become widely endorsed by others. They argued
that this form of communication created a credible functional
environment to support student projects. It created new topics, new
audiences, and new purposes for such work. Indeed, some researchers
(Cohen and Reil 1989; Reil, 1985) were able to demonstrate that
participation in these exercises resulted in improved grade point
scores for writing. This seemed to result from an active engagement
in the editorial responsibilities that this form of communication
afforded.
There have been similar case studies of successes in British schools
(eg. Keep, 1991; Wishart, 1988). Yet, the overall impression is that
these initiatives can be hard to promote and hard to sustain. Maddux
(1989) cautions the use of telecommunications before careful
considerations of cost and whether the same goals could not be
achieved more economically in other media. In reviewing a number of
such initiatives, Reil and Levin (1990) argue that users do quickly
discover the communication medium offers a qualitatively distinct kind
of interaction. But they also stress that a coherent need for the
exchange must be in place, and that here must be an active commitment
by some enthusiastic project manager. In reviewing a number of
computer-mediated school twinnings, Turnbull and Beavers (1989) also
refer to very careful planning and serious consideration of the real
compatibility of interacting communities. Keep (1991) conveys a
similar impression of the need for much energy in order to maintain
that critical level of exchange that sustains pupil interest. The
consensus seems to be that this medium can support valuable activity
if it is embedded in a larger framework of cross-site communication
and concern. The passing of text messages alone is too
decontextualised an experience to sustain serious pupil interest.
In the ten years since this idea of schools communicating through
computers was seeded, it is hard to conclude that an active and
effective culture of such communication has emerged. There are
still only pockets of success. It would be unfortunate if the general
principle of such collaborative school-based interactions were judged
on this variety of activity alone. From studying the reviews
mentioned above and from my own involvement in supporting a primary
school develop such links, I believe the goal of such cross-site
communication is worthwhile but it needs to be approached more
gradually. The problem is well crystallised by Hawkins, who comments:
In the educational world of the kindergarten through twelfth grade
there is, in most places, a relatively narrow band of activities that
these technologies make more efficient. As has been often noted, our
classrooms tend to be quite self-contained in terms of interactive
relationships and resources. (Hawkins, 1991, p.161)
Thus, it may be necessary to institute stronger traditions of *local*
computer-mediated collaboration before embarking on these more
ambitious communication exercises. It may be necessary to establish
practices of coordinating with the next classroom, before venturing
towards collaborations that span cultures and continents.
At least, this was the thinking behind a primary school networking
project established in cooperation with two colleagues, Geoff
Alred and Jack Gilliland. In the last three years, I have been
considering the kind of software structures that can support novel
forms of coordination at the level of a self-contained school site.
This, therefore, is a project focussed at communicating *through*
computers - within the forum of a single community. In the longer
term, one of its achievements may be to establish a culture of
communication that would be well-prepared for further-reaching
relationships.
Open-plan computing
I have chosen the phrase in this heading to suggest a link between
traditions of social organisation in British primary schools and a
particular computer infrastructure to be described below. This
configuration for school computers is conceived to create an
environment in which innovative communication might flourish - rather
as might also be achieved within the physically open-planned layout of
many classrooms.
Our configuration of computers entailed installing a low-cost
(Acorn Computers) network throughout the premises of a school.
Various programs were then written to manage this network and to
sustain certain forms of pupil activity within it. The school
comprises 7 classes corresponding to the successive years of primary
education: from 4/5 until 10/11. All classes always have at least one
network station and, by negotiation, around 5 additional machines can
be clustered in areas close by any class to promote more dedicated
activity. As with the university case study described in the previous
section, this is a structure realised at a fairly low-technology
level: the aim is to explore what is possible within the resources of
a typical school, rather than to demonstrate some state-of-the-art
(but inaccessible) model system.
I will summarise the main features of the software environment to
convey the possibilities for collaborative interactions through this
technology. The network centralises a great many programs that are
characteristic of those used in any British primary school. Thus, the
widely-recognised advantage of networks for simply serving such files
to pupil-users is realised in this instance. However, there are four
particular programs that are crucial to developing the structure in
more educationally distinctive ways. I will describe each of these in
turn. (1) A menu-driven interface allows pupils to navigate their way
through the disc space of the central file server. Teachers may
configure menus to be relevant to activities current in their own
classes. Moreover, each pupil is allocated their own file space and
file space may be associated with short term collaborative projects.
(2) A conventional word processor suitable for primary pupils is
available to all users. (3) Pupils may nominate files to be
incorporated into a database structure that organises them into a
system of "folders". Folders are associated with particular pupils
and also with particular projects and/or classroom communities. Their
contents may be examined through suitable movement through the network
menu-structure. The route a child might make to enter a new item
in her folder is illustrated in Figure 8.3 that shows a schematic
sequence of screen displays. (4) An electronic mail utility allows
pupils to have their own mail box. Text messages may be dispatched
within the community and to addresses of outside sites (these are
collated and dispatched as an automatic night job).
--------------------- Insert Figure 8.3 about here ----------------
As in the case of university networks, when we are considering
structures for coordination, we might think first of electronic mail.
After all, this utility supports communication that is closest to what
spontaneously we associate with collaboration. It supports dialogue
between individuals. Although this school has still had only modest
experience with electronic mail, it is clear that this resource can be
engaging and effective. However, it has acted by gluing together
other more substantial coordinated activity - rather than being itself
the central feature of some collaboration. For example, it has proved
a very effective resource in support of a school-wide project for
producing a newspaper. Material could be distributed over the network
to reach groups working on different aspects of this common concern.
Moreover, this mailer (SJ Research's *Interspan*) allows seamless
links to outside sites. So, given a meaningful context, such as
producing a magazine or newspaper, cross-site electronic mail can be
effectively integrated with a well-grounded local project.
However, here I am concerned to highlight less obvious collaborative
resources. In particular, the folder structure that was described
above. At the moment, much of the material within this system
comprises pupil's written work of a fairly traditional kind. Yet, the
collation that is achieved - perhaps in conjunction with certain
orienting teaching practices - serves to create a stronger social
framework for these children's efforts. The most straightforward
transforming effect relates to the creation of a strong sense of
audience. Surveys indicate that much pupil writing in education is
crafted only for the teacher-examiner (Britton, Burgess, Martin,
McLeod and Rosen, 1975). Educationalists have recently promoted a new
paradigm of writing instruction that puts more stress on the
rhetorical nature of literacy (Davies, 1989; Dipardo and Freedman,
1988). The National Writing Project (1989) gives a range of examples
of how this can be organised. Yet, in practice, it remains hard to
foster a sense of the school as a 'community of writers' (Dunn, 1989).
Evidently, the network-based structures I am describing take us some
way towards an infrastructure that can support credible audiences in
this sense. For example, it may facilitate the kind of exercise
described by Somerville (1989) in which older children write stories
that become the focus of reading and discussion among younger children
in the school.
The existence of a structure to collate and make accessible pupil's
work invites other collaborative engagements. One that I believe is
poorly exploited within all sectors of education can be expressed in
the phrase "leaving tracks". Martin (1989) has discussed the general
place of furnishing for writers models of practice: these may become
resources for reflection and inspiration. This principle can be
usefully realised in the present computer structure. Insofar as each
school class reproduces the aims and efforts of its predecessors, it
may be a source of some insight to have access to the achievements of
previous generations. The network allows a class to leave these kinds
of traces behind it. I view this as a "collaborative" initiative, as
it involves a socially-organised concern to create and to coordinate
around objects of shared understanding.
The principle of leaving tracks applies to individual pupils also.
So, pupils in this environment build up a portfolio of work that
captures their own development as writers (or scientists, or
journalists etc) and this portfolio can become a resource for their
own reflections on this process (cf. Brown, 1989). Indeed, pupils can
be found referring to these folders spontaneously, apart from any
encouragement they might encounter to do so in the context of
teacher-led activities. There is a link in this to one feature of
traditional computer-based learning tools that has been widely
discussed in the literature: that is, the capacity of these resources
to make visible the *processes* of intellectual construction. Thus,
J.S. Brown comments: 'We are missing the real source of power for
computer-based tools: the computer can record and represent the
process underlying the created product' (Brown, 1985, p.182).
However, this idea is always cited in reference to underlying
processes of a private, cognitive kind. It has not been effectively
developed at a level that recognises the socially-grounded nature of
much intellectual construction. In a sense, what the organised,
archival character of this network affords is opportunities for such
process of reflection in the social domain.
It is clear that this example of interacting *through* computers
involves a resourcing of "collaboration" in the broadest sense of that
term. We may summarise the resulting opportunities as follows. These
structures can create circumstances where distinct groups of children
can coordinate their efforts across barriers of time and classroom
separation. The production of a newspaper is a vivid example of this.
The networking can also create structures that allow children's work
to reach further into the common knowledge of the school and, thereby,
play some part in motivating new achievements. There may also be a
deeper sense in which the structure can support such common knowledge:
this finds a parallel with the "participatory structures" discussed
for a university community above. It is possible that the
coordination and access that networks can create may serve to bring
pupils nearer to the socially-organised experiences of *being*
biologists, or historians, or dramatists, or whatever. This is a
point made by other researchers who have witnessed something of what
local level networking might achieve in early education (Newman, 1989,
1990; Ruopp, in press).
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
The examples discussed in this chapter should put into sharper relief
the sense in which the concept of "collaboration" may characterise
effective settings for learning. At the heart of this conception are
the activities of creating and exploiting structures of common
knowledge and shared reference. However, I am stressing that there
are various ways in which understandings can be held in common among
learners and teachers. Collaborating should not narrowly describe the
circumstances of small groups working together in time and place at a
focussed problem. In the institutional settings of learning,
important common knowledge exists as part of the diffuse background to
a variety of problem solving circumstances. The present chapter has
discussed ways in which computers may resource learners investing in
this broader framework of understandings.
So, in discussing interactions *around* this technology, we
encountered circumstances in which a transient learning community -
sharing a common working space - might collaborate 'through the air'.
Here, clusters of computers furnish focal points at which individuals
(or small groups) may concentrate their work; from these points they
may drift in and out of lateral communications with others similarly
engaged. Moreover, the computer tools they share provide concrete
referential anchors that may more effectively support such
collaborative talk.
In discussing interactions *through* this technology, the varieties of
collaborative structures encountered was still greater. In these
cases, the interactions supported may be displaced in both time and
space. I argued that to focus on tools for supporting versions of
(text-based) conversational exchange was to present too narrow a
characterisation of collaborative possibilities in this medium. An
accessible shared file space offers more than this: it offers a rich
environment for creating objects of shared reference. Particularly
when utilised in a framework of organised social practices, this
further illustrates how new technology can successfully resource
(rather than deny) collaborative possibilities.
It might be argued that many of these examples do not crucially depend
upon computers: the relevant collaborations could be supported in
other ways, with other technologies. I have two reactions to this
argument. The first is that whatever may be *possible*, in practice,
many of these collaborative structures simply are not being realised
in other ways. Thus, for example, there are various means whereby
primary pupils work *could* be collated and made into an accessible
and managed resource for their peers and successors but - by and large
- it is treated this way. These shortfalls often do await a
technology that simply makes a critical difference to what may
realistically be achieved. My second reaction to this argument is
somewhat strategic. Actively identifying new technology with
collaborative practices serves to deflect attention from certain less
agreeable models of computer-supported learning. If we do not wish to
see new technology transform the experience of learning into something
solitary and dislocated - then we must demonstrate that it has a
credible place in a more collaborative framework.