Group Cognition Book

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Stahl, G. (2006). Group cognition: Computer support for building collaborative knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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About the Book

Exploring the software design, social practices, and collaboration theory needed to support group cognition -- collective knowledge constructed by small groups online ....

from the back cover:

Global and local networks of linked computers make collaborative working, learning, and acting possible through innovative uses of computer technology. In Group Cognition Gerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are needed to achieve computer supported collaborative knowledge building--group cognition that transcends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active media for social group cognition where ideas grow through the interactions within groups of people; software functionality can manage group discourse that results in shared understandings, new meanings, and collaborative learning. Stahl offers software design prototypes, analyzes empirical instances of collaboration, and elaborates a theory of collaboration that takes the group, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis.

Stahl's design studies concentrate on mechanisms to support group formation, multiple interpretive perspectives, and the negotiation of group knowledge in applications as varied as collaborative curriculum development by teachers, writing summaries by students, and designing space voyages by NASA engineers. Stahl's empirical analysis shows how, in small-group collaborations, the group constructs intersubjective knowledge that emerges from and appears in the discourse itself. This discovery of group meaning becomes the springboard for Stahl's outline of a social theory of collaborative knowing. Stahl also discusses such related issues as the distinction between meaning making at the group level and interpretation at the individual level, appropriate research methodology, philosophical directions for group cognition theory, and suggestions for further empirical work.

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Table of Contents

Note: The following materials were last revised March 16, 2005, from the final manuscript. This is a pre-publication version of the book. This version has not been edited, laid out or paginated by MIT Press. Please do not cite page numbers from this version or quote from it. This version is only for informal use and may not be duplicated.

Group Cognition:

Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge

by Gerry Stahl

Essays on Technology, Interaction and Cognition: pdf or html

	Chapter 1. Share Globally, Adapt Locally: pdf  or html
	Chapter 2. Evolving a Learning Environment: pdf  or html
	Chapter 3. Armchair Missions to Mars: pdf  or html
	Chapter 4. Supporting Situated Interpretation: pdf  or html
	Chapter 5. Collaboration Technology for Communities: pdf  or html
	Chapter 6. Perspectives on Collaborative Learning: pdf  or html
	Chapter 7. Groupware Goes to School: pdf  or html
	Chapter 8. Knowledge Negotiation Online: pdf  or html

	Chapter 9. A Model of Collaborative Knowledge Building: pdf  or html
	Chapter 10. Rediscovering the Collaboration: pdf  or html
	Chapter 11. Contributions to a Theory of Collaboration: pdf  or html
	Chapter 12. In a Moment of Collaboration: pdf  or html
	Chapter 13. Collaborating with Relational References: pdf  or html

	Chapter 14. Communicating with Technology: pdf  or html
	Chapter 15. Building Collaborative Knowing: pdf  or html
	Chapter 16. Group Meaning / Individual Interpretation: pdf  or html

	Chapter 17. Shared Meaning, Common Ground, Group Cognition: pdf  or html
	Chapter 18. Making Group Cognition Visible: pdf  or html

	Chapter 19. Can Collaborative groups Think?: pdf  or html
	Chapter 20. Opening New Worlds for Collaboration: pdf  or html

	Chapter 21. Thinking at the Small-Group Unit of Analysis: pdf  or html
	Notes: pdf  or html

References: pdf  or html

The whole book (pre-publication draft version) for printout ~ 500 pages, 4.5 MB: pdf or html