5.3.1 The added value of technology
The previous sections provide a technology-independent background on learning skills, types of learning problems and their relation to learning skills and collaboration. Technology can play an important role in developing learning skills and improving the quality of collaboration. With regards to feedback and reflection, for example, (Collins and Brown, 1988, pp. 4) emphasized the importance of computer support as “a powerful, motivating, and as yet untapped tool for focusing the students’ attention directly on their own thought processes”. Based on the well established benefits of feedback, reflection, and metacognition to learning (Section 5.1.2), one of the main goals of the design of the digital version of mysteries was to provide adequate reflective feedback at the right points in time within the process. Moreover, although solving a paper mystery includes a degree of externalization of thinking (as reflected by the layout of paper slips on the table), in order to make students attend to their thinking process strong support is required from the teacher throughout the process, ideally followed by a stimulated recall (video playback) session. This is unlikely to be a practical option in most classroom settings and is an area where digital technology, and in our case digital tabletop technology, has the potential to make a significant impact (Nunes et al., 2003; Collins and Brown, 1988). With computer support it is also possible to enforce a structure to learning tasks. When students are faced with a large problem solving task, instructional design principles based on behavioural learning theory emphasize the importance of dividing the tasks into smaller intermediate targets (Boyle, 1997). Teaching students to divide the task of solving a mystery into smaller sub-tasks with distinguished sub-goals, helps in shaping the students’ problem solving behaviour and encourages them to transfer this approach to solving
other problems. Computer support allows the enforcement of a structure on the task to help achieve this desired behaviour. Structuring the task also plays an important role in inter-activity reflection by making it possible to provide feedback and reflective feedback prompts at appropriate moments in the process.
Another obvious potential contribution that digital technology can make to learning practices is in the provision of coaching. Based on Vygotsky’s theories (Vygotski˘ı et al., 1978), the two primary processes in coaching are scaffolding and fading (Boyle, 1997). Contrary to my previous discussion of feedback, which is indeed considered as part of scaffolding, scaffolding support in coaching is used to refer to things from the teacher’s perspective, rather than that of the learner. In other words, with regard to coaching and scaffolding, we are interested in the roles that technology can play to reduce the load on the teacher (rather than the student). The concept of scaffolding is strongly related to Vygotsky’s notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD refers to the difference between what a child can achieve alone and what she can achieve under the guidance of an adult or in collaboration with more able peers. The term scaffolding refers to this guiding role of the adult, which normally includes acquiring and maintaining the child’s interest, establishing and maintaining focus on the task goals, providing a structure to the task, highlighting the important features that a child might overlook, demonstrating how to achieve goals, and helping in controlling frustrations by children when faced with complex tasks (Leat and Nicholas, 2000; Stahl, 2006). Fading is a closely related term and refers to the progressive reduction in the level of support, to the point where a child can solve the problem alone.
One of the key issues in computer support is the provision of scaffolding at the right time (Stahl, 2006). Applications must identify breakdowns and provide suitable information accordingly. In- formation provided at the wrong time is perceived as an undesirable interruption and will more likely be ignored. The design of Digital Mysteries takes this into consideration and makes use of the enforced task structure by providing tips only when students perform a task incorrectly and at stage boundaries. Consequently, such tips will not appear for more able students, or more precisely, such support will fade as the students improve their problem solving strategies. It is im- portant, however, to balance between providing structure and support for low achieving students, and avoiding gratuitous structure and interruptions for higher achieving students.
When it comes to supporting collaboration, although the parallel interaction afforded by table- tops is likely to lead to more equitable participation, this may not always be desirable. In some cases, single point interaction can promote higher quality discussions; and while multi-input en- courages shy learners to participate and reduces the dominance of one member of a group, it reduces the likelihood of lower achieving students learning from the higher achievers (Birnholtz et al., 2007; Do-Lenh et al., 2009; Hornecker et al., 2007). The design of Digital Mysteries tar- gets this issue by striking a balance between parallel and single input, increasing the awareness of participation levels, and forcing collaboration at certain moments in the interaction.
Computer support can also play an important role in making the students’ cognitive processes more accessible to interpretations by themselves, and by external observers. Stahl (2006) con- sidered the study of group cognition to be considerably easier than studying individual cognition since students in a group “must display to each other enough that everyone can judge where there are agreements and disagreements, conflicts or misunderstandings, confusions and insights” (pp. 222). Although his primary focus was on network-based environments (synchronous and asynchronous), Stahl’s account of group cognition manifests the concept of externalization as a catalyst for useful learning. This view on the positive consequences of collaboration in making learner’s thinking accessible is also shared by a number of other researchers (e.g. Roschelle and Teasley, 1995; Lehtinen, 2003; Van Der Linden et al., 2000). The implication for tabletop tech- nology is that the more an application encourages and helps students externalize their thinking, by making it visible on the table or through discussion, the greater the probability that students will need to explain their thinking, thereby promoting the positive learning mechanisms introduced in Section 5.1.3. Consequently, a fundamental motivation underpinning the design of Digital Mys- teries is the provision of tools for the students that encourage them to make visible on the table (i.e. visible to others) as much of their thinking as possible.
5.3.2 Tabletops and computer supported collaborative learning
As argued in Section 1.2.4, the current paradigm of CSCL research excludes face-to-face collab- orative settings and instead focuses on synchronous, or asynchronous networked environments (Hilliges et al., 2007; Lehtinen, 2003). This demonstrates a significant shift from early research conducted in the 1990s (Crook, 1994; Roschelle and Teasley, 1995) where the role computers could play as tools for supporting small groups collaborating around shared computer displays was investigated. Tabletop technology provides an opportunity to reintegrate the challenge of providing computer support for face-to-face collaborative learning within CSCL research.
The class of computer support that I seek to explore was best described by Stahl (2006) and can be summarized as follows: the focus is on the group rather than the individual; the activity is that of constructing new knowledge rather than on working on, or transmission of known facts; learning is supported by computers rather than taking place in isolation; the interaction is collaborative and not competitive or accidental; and finally its orientation is on discussion, debate, argumentation, and deep understanding and not on drills or practising elementary facts.
My goal is to utilize the unique affordances of tabletops that distinguish the technology from traditional computer-based learning settings in the following:
• Supporting learners’ thinking skills in particular their higher order thinking skills, metacog- nition and reflection. This is achieved by:
– Selection of an appropriate class of collaborative task. I have selected Paper Mysteries which is inherently a collaborative task that focuses on higher level thinking skills and
metacognition. At the same time, mysteries satisfies the criteria suggested by Nunes et al. (2003), Baker and Lund (1997), and Dillenbourg (1999) for supporting inter- activity and post activity feedback and reflection opportunities.
– Supporting reflection, which (with the help of the supervisor) can make the students aware of their metacognitive skills.
– Supporting activities and behaviours which, according to the theories of learning, in- crease the probability that useful learning mechanisms occur. For example, encourag- ing externalization and structuring the task.
• Providing useful and timely feedback to the students.
• Reducing the level of support required from teachers and classroom assistants by the provi- sion of scaffolding and fading.
• Encouraging effective collaboration by switching between multi-synchronous input, single input, and enforced collaboration, in addition to visualizing participation levels.
The design also ensures that it does not impose any restrictions on the students’ non-verbal communication. This is achieved by selecting a technology that does not limit the students’ move- ment (i.e. force students to sit or stand in fixed positions as in the DiamondTouch table (Dietz and Leigh, 2001)), and by using interaction techniques that are orientation independent and that can be used from any location.
5.3.3 Evaluating the benefits of computer support
Studies investigating the impact of thinking skills (Higgins et al., 2004; McGuinness, 1999) showed clear evidence of their positive effect on students’ achievements in both curriculum and non- curriculum measures. These studies emphasized the need to teach thinking skills in the curriculum with a metacognitive prospective, and to encourage collaborative learning. Higgins et al. (2004) made the important point that the improvement in the students may not be immediately apparent, and that there may be a significant delay before the effects start to be reflected in tests and exams. Crook (1994) made similar claims in relation to the evaluation of the impact of computer tech- nology within education, that such evaluation should go beyond input-output tests and should be measured within the broader patterns of use. Accordingly, I chose not to base the evaluation of the developed tabletop application on pre-test and post-test learning measures. Instead I sought to validate that the application satisfies its design goals in encouraging activities that utilize and teach thinking skills (e.g. encourage externalization of thought and therefore increase the opportunities for useful discussions); encouraging collaboration; and providing reflective feedback.