Project DoCTA: 

Knowledge-Building in Collaborative Telelearning

Anders Morch

Department of Information Science

University of Bergen

P.O. Box 7800N-5020 Bergen, Norway

Email: anders@ifi.uib.no

Answers to the workshop questions

a) Main topic of interest: KBE Pedagogy; Growing the KBE Research community

b-c) We have been involved over the past 1+ years in a funded project to employ a groupware tool for teaching a university level course with students from three different educational institutions in Norway. Students were geographically distributed and collaborated (in teams of three) to build a visual artifact of relevance to teacher training (the subject matter). We report on our findings, identify some problematic issues, and lists topics we consider important for further progress in KBEs.

Position statement: The setting of project DOCTA

DoCTA (Design and use of Collaborative Telelearning Artefacts) is a multidisciplinary research project administered and coordinated by the Department of Information Science at the University of Bergen. The project is funded by ITU (IT in education) programme, and is a collaboration of three educational institutions in Norway. The project focuses on the design and use of technological artefacts to support collaborative telelearning. The research is not limited to only studying these artefacts per se, but include social, cultural, pedagogical and psychological aspects of the process in which these artefacts are an integral part. This means that we both provide and study virtual learning environments that are being deployed to students organised in geographically distributed teams. 

The main research focus is reflected in both the theoretical and methodological approach chosen in the project. The theoretical, or conceptual approach, is rooted in a sociocultural perspective that emphasises an understanding of language, culture and other aspects of the social setting. The methodology is influenced by ethnographic studies, favouring naturalistic and qualitative research methods. 

From a research perspective, the exploratory studies being carried out within DoCTA will provide us with insight into the processes of collaboration enabling us to identify processes of relevance to collaborative telelearning. The community of study includes teachers, students and facilitators.

The main research question has been formulated to ask how these students, teachers and facilitators organise their work. A second important questions is what collaboration patterns do we find among the students. In order to to answer these and other questions different evaluation methods and techniques are being used. The most important sources are derived from observing the students as they collaborate using artefacts, from interviewing them, from the artefacts they design, and also from electronic logging of the artefacts used for collaborating (e.g., email, white- boards, chats, to-do-lists, post-it notes).

Currently our work is focused around evaluation of the VisArt (Visual Artifact) scenario. The VisArt activity took place during February and March 1999. VisArt began with one week of training in using TeamWave Workplace / TW (a groupware tools) and in team collaboration. This was followed by a three weeks design and collaboration activity where the team was to design a learning room in TW. Each team comprised three students, one student from each institution. There were no opportunities for the teams to meet face-to- face. TW was used as the main information and communication medium, and was supplemented with email.

One of the theories we use to analyze the scenario is Activity Theory. Our experience with Activity Theory is that it provides a lens through which we can see the world. It is useful to orient thoughts and research questions. It provides a number of methods/tools shaped by a general theoretical approach. It can be used to guide methodological decisions regarding evaluation (how technology is used) and to a lesser extent regarding design (how technology will be used). In fact, from an Activity Theory perspective we should always talk about redesign because we are "redesigning" work/learning praxis.

Activity Theory reminds us to always focus on context and suggests the articulation of the design of artefacts as change in activity;. From this perspective activities evolve and change and artefacts evolve and change. As Susanne Bodker has been heard saying, the work of the user is not to use the information system (using an artefact is not an activity) rather work role brings artefact into the activity; gives it a context.

We interpret this to mean that Activity Theory needs to be integrated with a design perspective. The perspective should be that design is seen as continual redesign, a kind of artefact evolution set in a social context. The rationale for this is that evolution of artefacts needs to be informed by the practice carried out by users when they use the artefacts in genuine human activity. Otherwise the redesign will be of little practical value.