Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 63, April 2013, Pages 368-379
Computers & Education

Collboard: Fostering new media literacies in the classroom through collaborative problem solving supported by digital pens and interactive whiteboards

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.12.019Get rights and content

Abstract

Education systems worldwide must strive to support the teaching of a set of New Media Literacies (NMLs). These literacies respond to the need for educating human capital within participatory cultures in a highly technologized world. In this paper, we present Collboard, a constructivist problem solving activity for fostering the development of specific NMLs in classrooms: collective intelligence, distributed cognition and transmedia navigation. Collboard encompasses successive individual and collaborative work phases that prompt active student participation and engagement. It integrates digitally augmented appliances, namely, digital pens as a means to support individual work, and interactive whiteboards as a collaborative knowledge construction space. We report on the conceptual design of Collboard, its different technological and software components, as well as our findings from experiences we conducted in a Swedish school with 12 students from a 7th grade maths class. Findings from the experience provide an indication that Collboard can be well integrated in classroom teaching, and that it can foster the development of collective intelligence, distributed cognition and transmedia navigation in different knowledge domains.

Highlights

► A problem solving activity for fostering new media literacies in classrooms. ► Integration of digital pens and interactive whiteboards in classrooms. ► An exploratory study was conducted involving 7th grade students and teachers. ► The study indicates that the activity may be integrated in classroom teaching.

Introduction

Our society is evolving at a faster pace than ever before, challenging individuals and organizations to deal with changes, and challenging educational institutions to prepare learners for the future (Dede, 2010; Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006; Partnership for 21st Century Skills Framework, 2009; Warschauer, 2007). Due to the current demands of labour, citizenship and self-actualization it has been argued that effective technology use by individuals is essential to successful performance outcomes (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-leftwich, 2010). However, besides being technologically literate, the worker of the 21st century must display proficiency in a range of the so-called New Media Literacies (NMLs) (Jenkins et al., 2006). NMLs are set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need to be capable of performing adequately in 21st century labour, citizenship, and self-actualization (Dede, 2010; Jenkins et al., 2006). The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking, and build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom (Jenkins et al., 2006).

One way in which teaching of NMLs can be incorporated in education systems is through collaborative learning activities (Dede, 2010; Jenkins et al., 2006; Partnership for 21st Century Skills Framework, 2009). Collaborative problem solving activities supported by ICTs open up the possibility of fostering specific NMLs such as collective intelligence and distributed cognition. In collective intelligence contexts, the focus is on harnessing group intelligence in order to enable greater productivity and better decision-making than are possible by individuals working in isolation (Gregg, 2010; Luo, Xia, Yoshida, & Wang, 2009). Collective intelligence literacy may be facilitated through fostering learners' ability to pool knowledge and compare ideas with others working towards a common goal (Jenkins et al., 2006). In distributed cognition processes, knowledge can be shared across a group of people and the tools they use to solve a problem (Hollan, Hutchins, & Kirsh, 2000; Hutchins, 1996; Norman, 1993). Distributed cognition literacy has been related to the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities (Dede, 2010; Jenkins et al., 2006). The ability to follow the flow of information across different media, i.e., transmedia navigation (Scolari, 2009), has been also considered an integral part of the set of NMLs for the 21st century (Dede, 2010; Jenkins et al., 2006). Particularly, the use of devices like Digital Pens (DPs) and Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) in classrooms opens new possibilities for transmedia navigation in collaborative learning scenarios. For instance, students may use DPs to write down notes on paper and later share them with their classmates through displaying them on the IWB. While integrating DPs and IWBs in the classroom's pedagogical flow to support individual and collaborative work appears technologically feasible, the integration of these technological resources poses a design challenge from a functional perspective, as it requires that students are able to follow the flow of information across both analogue and digital media.

Collaborative problem solving activities supported by ICTs may elicit the development of collective intelligence and distributed cognition literacies in complementary ways (Dillenbourg & Jermann, 2007, pp. 275–301; Fawcett & Garton, 2005; Stahl, 2005; Weinberger, Stegmann, & Fischer, 2007), as students construct shared meaning interacting with tools that may facilitate and scaffold the collaboration process (Dillenbourg, Jarvela, & Fischer, 2009, pp. 3–19). In response to the need for classroom learning tools capable of fostering the teaching of 21st century skills, in this paper we present Collboard: a collaborative problem solving activity that leverages digital technologies such as DPs and IWBs as a means of supporting co-construction and sharing of knowledge in problem-solving scenarios. Collboard's design envisions students as active knowledge constructors, while prompting the teacher to become a facilitator of the learning process.

Collboard was trialed for one month in a Swedish school with two teachers and twelve 7th grade students in the field of mathematics. The aims of the experience were: (1) to understand the extent to which Collboard can be used in the classroom to support the teaching of the curriculum; (2) to ascertain the value of integrating digital pens and interactive whiteboards in problem solving activities in the classroom; (3) to determine whether the development of new media literacies such as distributed cognition, collective intelligence, and transmedia navigation may be fostered by Collboard; and (4) seek evidence of Collboard's potential to improve academic performance.

The next sections present a discussion on the current literature and research work related to Collboard (Section 2), a report on the pedagogical design and technological workflow upon which Collboard is based (Section 3), a description of the methodology by which Collboard has been validated (Section 4), and a report on the findings from the trials (Section 5). Finally, the outcomes of these experiences are discussed (Section 6), followed by conclusions and future work prospects (Section 7).

Section snippets

Related work

An increasing number of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments reported in the literature (Baloian & Zurita, 2009; Boticki, Looi, & Wong, 2011; Roschelle, Rafanan, Estrella, Nussbaum, & Claro, 2010; Warwick, Mercer, Kershner, & Staarman, 2010) seek to foster opportunities for learners to become involved in participatory, collaborative, active, and constructivist learning in the classroom. They particularly focus on doing so in ways congruent with the skills that should be

Instructional design

Collboard is a collaboration script (Dillenbourg, 2002; O'Donnell & Dansereau, 1992) that engages students in solving open-ended tasks in successive phases involving both individual and collaborative work. Fig. 1 presents a Unified Modelling Language (UML) activity diagram illustrating Collboard's pedagogical flow. UML (2011) is a standard modelling language for software products and process specifications. An activity diagram can be utilized to describe control flows in a collaborative

Context and sample

Our first experience with Collboard was conducted for one month with 7th grade students in a primary school in Växjö, Sweden. Due to a limited supply of digital pens, our study was based on a minimalistic setting involving two teachers and 12 mixed (male and female) students divided into two groups of six. The teachers randomly chose their group of six students and worked with them during the entirety of the Collboard experience. Given the limited size of the cohort, we opted to split it evenly

Observation of the Collboard sessions

Throughout the trials both teachers involved showed increasing proficiency in both the use of the Collboard IWB tools and in asserting their role as mediators and facilitators of students' collaboration in ways congruent with the pedagogical rationale of the script. At first, both teachers were somewhat reluctant to allow the students to interact with the IWB directly, or called many students to the front at once to do so. The female teacher in the first session preferred to have full control

Discussion

Collboard introduces collaborative scaffolding for solving open-ended tasks in the classroom, which is based on the CollPad script (Nussbaum et al., 2009). It encompasses students' individual and collaborative work in successive phases. However, it differs in its structure from CollPad, as in CollPad the individual work phase is followed by two collaborative work phases: a computer-mediated small group discussion phase and a discussion involving the whole class, whereas in Collboard, the

Conclusions and future work

The initial validation of Collboard provides indications that the problem solving environment that is fostered by the tool in the classroom can support distributed cognition literacy, favour collective intelligence over individual intelligence, and provide functional transmedia navigation allowing the teacher and students to follow the flow of information across traditional (pen and paper) and digital resources (the IWB). However, Collboard requires that the teacher devise tasks appropriate for

Acknowledgements

Research supported by the Center for Research on Educational Policy and Practice, Grant CIE01-CONICYT. A special thank you goes to the teachers and students from Kronoberg School in Växjö, Sweden that were actively involved in this project.

Claudio Alvarez is a professor of computer science at Universidad de Los Andes, Santiago Chile. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. His research interests include computer-supported collaborative learning, using mobile technologies as scaffolds for face-to-face collaborative work, and groupware systems design. Contact him at Facultad de Ingenieria y Ciencias Aplicadas, Universidad de Los Andes, Av. San Carlos de

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    Claudio Alvarez is a professor of computer science at Universidad de Los Andes, Santiago Chile. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. His research interests include computer-supported collaborative learning, using mobile technologies as scaffolds for face-to-face collaborative work, and groupware systems design. Contact him at Facultad de Ingenieria y Ciencias Aplicadas, Universidad de Los Andes, Av. San Carlos de Apoquindo 2200, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile; [email protected].

    Sadaf Salavati is a PhD candidate in Computer Science with an orientation in Information Systems at the School of Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics, at Linnaeus University in Sweden. She is affiliated with the Center for Learning and Knowledge Technologies (CeLeKT) and her research interests are within the field of technology enhanced learning. Contact her at PG Vejdes 735195, Växjö, Sweden; [email protected].

    Miguel Nussbaum is a full professor of Computer Science at the School of Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. His research areas are ubiquitous learning and knowledge management. He received his Ph.D. in Technical Sciences from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland. He's a member of the board of the Chilean National Science Foundation and a member of the Regional Scientific Committee for Latin American and the Caribbean, of the Unesco Forum of Higher Education, Research, and Knowledge. Contact him at Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Edificio San Agustin, 4to Piso, Macul, Santiago, Chile; [email protected].

    Marcelo Milrad is a Full Professor of Media Technology at the Department of Computer Science, School of Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics, at Linnaeus University (LNU) in Sweden. He is also the director of the Center for Learning and Knowledge Technologies (CeLeKT). His current research interests include the design of learning environments to support learning about complex domains, collaborative discovery learning and the development of mobile and wireless applications to support collaborative learning. Contact him at PG Vejdes 735195, Växjö, Sweden; [email protected].

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