Notes on SimRocket clip 6 (extended)

by Gerry Stahl, September 14, 2000

In this three minute video clip, a computer simulation of a rocket launch is introduced into a middle school science project. An analysis of the conversation, verbalizations, social interactions, and other behaviors captured in the video clip provide insight into a collaborative learning process in which the students and teacher construct a shared meaning of the simulation artifact.

In the course of a three hour project, the five students launch one hundred simulated rockets and record the heights they reach. Working with the teacher, they collaboratively conduct analyses of their data and make scientific predictions. During this segment, they are learning how to launch the rocket  and record its maximum height. In doing this, they construct meaning for the simulation as an artifact that is interesting and that can be used in their broader project.

Video analysis provides a unique window into the very subtle and complex social and cognitive processes that promote the collaborative learning at work when a computer-based artifact is introduced in a classroom. The insight gained from such an analysis can be invaluable to the software developer who is designing the artifact. Our analysis is very preliminary and we will not explore its ultimate implications. Rather, we will try to indicate a number of aspects of analysis that have begun to emerge from the video clip.

From our preliminary observations of the following themes in the video clip, we conclude that we can analyze many aspects of collaborative learning that are normally invisible. In the particular event captured in this video clip, a group of five thirteen year old boys engage in a scientific activity with mixed success. On their own, they could not have used the given computer simulation artifact as a tool for scientific experimentation. In contrast, an adult (at least one with the teacher’s internalized skills) could accomplish this individually. Within the group context, the students can engage in this and understand the artifacts and procedures as meaningful.

1. Episodic experience. The students experience each rocket launch as an engaging activity and they focus on its many unique features as a concrete event.
2. Mimetic experience. The students experience the rocket viscerally. They engage in physical activity – primarily by creating rocket-like vocalizations – through which they bodily identify with the rocket.
3. Transparency. The students “see through” the technology to experience the rocket itself in its virtual world. Of course, they are also aware of the technology and focus on it at other times, as discussed below.
4. Affordances. The students are keenly aware of what can and cannot be simulated in the software; the group activity explores this and reflects on the proper use of the artifact.
5. Interpretive levels. The students are facile at moving between levels of reality, experiencing in turn: the rocket, imaginative projections of rockets, the computer technology, and alternative software designs.
6. Perspectives. Each student has his own way of participating in the group process, as does the teacher.
7. Bodily arrangements. The five students form two groups in front of two computers, with periodic inter-group interactions. The teacher generally moves behind them, but occasionally appears between the computer and the students or causes one or more students to orient toward him.
8. Gestures. Gestures are used primarily to direct group attention toward something in the simulation or on a data sheet, but also to point to the technology, such as at a mouse or software icon.
9. Sound effects and exclamations. Vocalizations dominate this particular video clip. They may be attempts to initiate communication that are not picked up by others. They may be forms of ego-centric self-talk: utterances of emotional reaction to experiences, which in more cognitively developed individuals might have been internalized as silent thoughts.
10. Kids culture. The students engage in style of interaction that are independent of the school classroom culture, and at times perhaps subversive of it.
11. Zone of proximal development. The students each have different abilities or styles for learning within the group.
12. Situated-ness within the activity context. The science project involves computing effects of different rocket characteristics and firing physical model rockets; these activity goals influence the understanding of the simulation artifact.
13. Modeling scientific thinking. The teacher’s statements frequently model systematic, step-wise structures of analytic thinking and precision in expressing observations; students often pick up on this and incorporate it in their statements, even reformulating other students’ statements in this way.
14. Data collection and analysis skills. The data sheet for recording rocket heights forms an important external memory artifact that is also introduced in this video clip. The group begins to construct its meaning here. Later, its use will become confused and the teacher will model systematic, reflective use of this artifact.
15. Isolated tasks. Some students are highly oriented toward engaging in isolated, teacher-assigned tasks, like launching a rocket or averaging several numbers on a calculator (an artifact already understood by the students). Other students are more interested in the larger experimental questions of the activity.
16. Division of labor and coordination. Tasks such as firing rockets, observing heights, recording heights, averaging heights, and drawing conclusions from the averages are divided among the students through their social interactions. The coordination of results is often problematic.

We believe that we have started to analyze a variety of aspects of the video clip that can contribute to an understanding of collaborative learning that takes place. This learning centers around a computer-based artifact; we are especially interested in the role this artifact plays in the learning. Our analysis is very preliminary:

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