Elizabeth Lenell

University of Colorado at Boulder

The project I am currently working on is part of a larger project called the JIME Discourse Analysis Project, and was made available in connection with Gerry Stahl's seminar at CU-Boulder entitled "Computer Mediation of Collaborative Learning: State of the Art & Beyond." In this project, we are using archived pre-prints and their associated review debates from the web-accessible Journal of Interactive Media in Education. Archives dating from when the first article was published in the fall of 1996 have provided the core of our data in this project. These pre-prints and the debates are available at: http://www-jime.open.ac.uk:8000. The purpose of this larger project is:

(1) to get a feel for what is actually taking place in the debates and how people are using the forum

(2) to see how JIME is doing relative to its stated goals

(3) to advance the state of knowledge and theory in the area of analyzing online scholarly forums.

The journal is available at http://www-jime.open.ac.uk. We have an international and multi-disciplinary team working on this project. Participants include the JIME founders and original designers, Tammy Sumner at the University of Colorado (CU), Simon Buckingham Shum at The Open University (OU) in England, and Mike Wright at CU. Participants from the Alliance Project between the OU and the Universite de Provence in France: Nathalie Bonnardel, Aline Chevalier, Annie Piolat. Participants from the University of Colorado (CU) Mick Khoo (anthropology), Rogerio de Paula (computer science), and myself (Elizabeth Lenell, educational psychology and cognitive science). Partipants in Germany who are remotely participating, and who are also part of Gerry Stahl's seminar at CU: Marcel Hoffman (University of Dortmund), Andrea Misch (University of Dortmund)

The JIME Discourse Analysis project is clearly multifaceted, with people seeming to be primarily interested in the interactions between individuals (e.g., author->reviewer, author->editor, etc.), as well as the characterization of JIME as a knowledge-building environment.

My interest is in the communicative pragmatics of this specific environment: what characteristics of the environment afford particular kinds of interactions or speech acts (Grice; Austin and Searle), and in what areas do these acts occur most frequently. For instance, it is expected that the majority of interactions will be seen in the reviews of Methodology and Discussion, since these are the areas by which the scientific community judges research. How an individual reviewer presents material in making those judgments--how it "looks"-- may vary by reviewer based on several factors, however. Gallimore and Goldenberg (1994?), in talking about pragmatics in other learning situations, have pointed to the importance of participant awareness and knowledge of other contributors in teaching and learning situations. For instance, the levels of detail provided by a critical reviewer may depend on the assumptions of prior knowledge a reviewer makes. Deep levels of discussion may indicate how little common knowledge about an issue or area actually exists, and may reveal areas where knowledge exchange and transformation is occurring. My analysis begins with an examination of these "deep discussions" and their content. I would like to note that I presume "community," from at least a philosophical standpoint, in approaching this project. We do not distinguish communities in temporal terms. I believe a community can be short-lived, thus including the community that involves JIME reviewers. These reviewers are part of a community based around this particular medium for two reasons: first, they are invited into the community by the editor as core practitioner; second, they come into the community with a pre-established role in mind. They have created community by assuming and recognizing these community roles. This is in addition to any larger communities they may belong to and share with other reviewers.