Group Cognition

by Stahl, Gerry

• ISBN13: 9780262195393
• ISBN10: 0262195399
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-07
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

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

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	vii
Introduction: Essays on Technology, Interaction, and Cognition	1	(24)
I. Design of Computer Support for Collaboration
Studies of Technology Design	25	(6)
Share Globally, Adapt Locally	31	(16)
Evolving a Learning Environment	47	(18)
Armchair Missions to Mars	65	(16)
Supporting Situated Interpretation	81	(12)
Collaboration Technology for Communities	93	(26)
Perspectives on Collaborative Learning	119	(36)
Groupware Goes to School	155	(22)
Knowledge Negotiation Online	177	(24)
II. Analysis of Collaborative Knowledge Building
Studies of Interaction Analysis	193	(8)
A Model of Collaborative Knowledge Building	201	(12)
Rediscovering the Collaboration	213	(14)
Contributions to a Theory of Collaboration	227	(18)
In a Moment of Collaboration	245	(12)
Collaborating with Relational References	257	(28)
III. Theory of Group Cognition
Studies of Collaboration Theory	277	(8)
Communicating with Technology	285	(18)
Building Collaborative Knowing	303	(28)
Group Meaning / Individual Interpretation	331	(16)
Shared Meaning, Common Ground, Group Cognition	347	(14)
Making Group Cognition Visible	361	(24)
Can Collaborative Groups Think?	385	(24)
Opening New Worlds for Collaboration	409	(22)
Thinking at the Small-Group Unit of Analysis	431	(38)
Notes	469	(10)
References	479	(20)
Name Index	499	(4)
Subject Index	503