Collaboration

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Collaboration learning I Intersubjectivity and
common ground

• Pål Fugelli

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Intersubjectivity, what is it about?

• Shared understandings
• Interpersonal phenomena
• Necessary for bridging the known and the new in
  communication (Rogoff et al., 1993).
• Increasingly considered an essential aspect of
  learning (see i.e. Matusov, 2001)

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In-between subjectivities

• Related concepts
• The sphere in between (Buber)
• Intersubjective space (Crossley)
• Shared prolepsis (Rommetveit)
• Grounding (i.e. Clark, Baker)

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Research agenda for CSCL

• CSCL is described as the study of practices of
  meaning-making in the context of joint activity
  and the ways in which these practices are
  mediated through designed artifacts. (Koschmann,
  2002 cited in Suthers)

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Grounding

• Grounding is the name given to the interactive
  processes by which common ground (or mutual
  understanding) between individuals is constructed
  and maintained (Baker et al., 1999) .
• A process of adding information to the common
  ground between individuals while communicating
  (Clark Brennan, 1991).
• All collective actions (including learning) are
  accordingly built on a common ground.

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Linguistics, CHAT and CSCL

• Baker et al. (1999) maintains that language
  science provides fine-grained cognitive models
  of the grounding process, collaboration and how
  the two relate, within the short timescale on
  isolated verbal interactions (p. 32).
• On the other hand, CHAT offers a conception of
  learning as an appropriation of tools, enabling
  us to get an idea of languages function in a
  CSCL environment.

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Example Activity system from the Gene-Ethics
(CSCL) scenario
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Grounding-principles

• 1. The grounding criterion
• The contributor and the partners mutually believe
  that the partners have understood what the
  contributor meant to a criterion sufficient for
  the current purpose.
• (Clark Schaefer, 1989)

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Grounding-principles

• 2. The principle of least collaborative effort
• Speakers are likely to spend just enough effort
  as is needed for the current purpose..
• (Clark Brennan, 1991)

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Media constraints on grounding

• Possible constraints a medium may impose on
  communication Clark and Brennan (1991)
• co-presence
• visibility
• audibility
• co-temporality
• simultaneity
• sequentiality
• reviewability
• revisability

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Rommetveits dialogic approach to
intersubjectivity

• Based on a dialogic epistemology (see Linell)
• By joining dialogical interactions, we
  temporarily establish shared understandings of
  utterances in a sociocultural context.
• Every communicative act builds upon the
  commitment to a temporarily shared social world"
  (Rommetveit, 197429)

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Prolepses

• Intersubjectivity must be taken for granted in
  order to be (partially) achieved.
• Shared prolepsis describes what is presupposed or
  taken for granted by participants prior to
  interaction.

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The spatial-temporal interpersonal co-ordinates
of the act of speech
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Perfect intersubjectivity?

• Communication aims at transcendence of the
  private worlds of the participants (Rommetveit,
  197994)
• But our pluralistic social world (and others)
  can only be partially shared and fragmentarily
  known.
• -gt Perfect intersubjectivity is not possible. Its
  never complete..

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The carburetor story

• A lady who is a very knowledgeable amateur auto
  mechanic discovers that there is something wrong
  with the carburetor of her car. Her husband, who
  is notoriously ignorant about car engines and
  does not even know what a carburetor looks like,
  offers to drive the car to a garage to have it
  repaired. He tells the car mechanic at the
  garage, There is apparently something wrong with
  the carburetor. This saves the latter
  considerable time in searching for the problem.

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Practical

• Interpret the utterance
• There is apparently something wrong with the
  carburetor.

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Further development

• Object-orientation in distributed knowledge
  practices.
• The adaptation of Rommetveits perspective to
  account for intersubjectivity at a distance in
  collective activity systems (Engeström, 2001).
• Inter-worlds in cyberspace..