Group cognition : computer support for building collaborative knowledge / Gerry Stahl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stahl, Gerry.

Series:

Acting with technology.

Acting with technology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Computer networks.

Computer-assisted instruction.

Physical Description:

viii, 510 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make new ways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. 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. His 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.

Contents:

Intro

Series Foreword

Introduction: Essays on Technology, Interaction, and Cognition

I Design of Computer Support for Collaboration

1 Share Globally, Adapt Locally

2 Evolving a Learning Environment

3 Armchair Missions to Mars

4 Supporting Situated Interpretation

5 Collaboration Technology for Communities

6 Perspectives on Collaborative Learning

7 Groupware Goes to School

8 Knowledge Negotiation Online

II Analysis of Collaborative Knowledge Building

9 A Model of Collaborative Knowledge Building

10 Rediscovering the Collaboration

11 Contributions to a Theory of Collaboration

12 In a Moment of Collaboration

13 Collaborating with Relational References

III Theory of Group Cognition

14 Communicating with Technology

15 Building Collaborative Knowing

16 Group Meaning / Individual Interpretation

17 Shared Meaning, Common Ground, Group Cognition

18 Making Group Cognition Visible

19 Can Collaborative Groups Think?

20 Opening New Worlds for Collaboration

21 Thinking at the Small-Group Unit of Analysis

Notes

References

Name Index

Subject Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [479]-498) and indexes.

ISBN:

0-262-29262-9

9786612096778

0-262-25702-5

1-282-09677-X

1-4237-7450-7

OCLC:

69661080