Timeline (KC1) VideoGames (KC2) VideoMap (KC2) VideoTech (KC3)
Shared epistemic objects Timeline - divided into sections, so imperfectly shared. Balancing number of posts in each section. Shared epistemic objects Evolving idea of what to include in a video. Video, devised during recording.
Shared epistemic objects Common space of conversation and commentary on popular culture in education. Shared development of issues while creating a digital artefact.
Shared epistemic objects Video, conceptual content and how to use both in a presentation.
Presentation text and delivery: modified based on mutual feedback in practice session.
Synthesising objects Ellis' selection of and learning of the Timeline tool, based on discussed needs.
Synthesising objects Notes and mind map from initial tutorials. Final edit of the video.
Synthesising objects Selected articles and commentary.
The final video map and presentation script Illustrative found videos. Notes from meetings.
Synthesising objects Blake’s early video and final video edit.
River’s storyboard/script. Presentation scripts. Charlie’s edited clip of newscasters.
As I mapped the epistemic objects at the centre of group projects in object diagrams (Figures 4, 12, 15 and 20), I traced connections between early ideas, their repetition in later conversations and again final expression in the resulting artefact. The groups’ layering of concepts and sources over time resembled Perkins’ (1994) ‘heap’ of loosely connected items (Section 2.5.6), constructed towards a shared epistemic object.
Student discussion ranged over a number of topics, including, for example, a current debate on new curriculum, anecdotes from high school and research ethics from psychology. Objects, conceptual and artefactual, were tossed onto the heap of shared knowledge during class and online as well. Loose categorisation (Perkins, 1994) was observable in the way that the VideoMap students in particular, but also the VideoTech students, added comments and notes to resources shared on Facebook. They pointed out ideas that struck them as important and prescribed the scope of their project by, for example, excluding information about pre-kindergarten education (VideoMap). As the object diagrams have illustrated, comments, articles, notes and conversations from meetings and online posts recurred within later discussion, and prompted action. Work expressed as artefacts became part of the common heap that supported the emerging epistemic object, with elements available to be plucked out, reconfigured and used in a final product for assessment. Of course, the semi-structured heap itself was an interim group product, edited and added to through collaborative activity.
There was visible contrast between the groups in the number of shared objects and conceptual discussion. Comparing object diagrams, there is a difference in quality, number and density of connections. Similarly, the in-class mind maps produced by VideoTech (Figure 22), VideoGames (Figure 13) and VideoMap (Figure 17) correspondingly show different levels of engagement with concepts. On the side of those who produced a more fertile heap can be placed the VideoMap and VideoTech groups—both recording ideas in interim artefacts—while the Timeline and VideoGames groups did not share as much conceptual development.
The ‘heaping’ groups showed a trialogical approach (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005), using objects centrally in their projects. The VideoMap group used mind-mapped notes, articles and other objects such as videos to centre their discussion, initially independently from a presentation format. The VideoTech group used fewer sources in inquiry, but individuals created artefacts—synthesising objects—to instantiate ideas and progress the development of their video. The object diagrams of group projects traced conceptual development and illustrate how recurring ideas and contributed artefacts were synthesised by individuals. For the VideoTech group, the objects created and shared along the way, primarily Blake’s draft video and River’s storyboard, contributed to and represented the progress of the group.
This not to say the other groups did not work with objects, but that they shared and created fewer as products of their collaboration. The Timeline group shared examples of learning sites in tutorials and built their artefact over time, structured by the online timeline tool, but essentially worked separately. The VideoGames group was obliged to collaborate on the video, which, with little foundational work on concepts, was their direct object of activity. These two groups constructed relatively little in common to draw upon when putting together their digital objects.
It may be a truism to point out that shared knowledge creation relies on the development of a foundational set of resources and shared understandings on which to base work. Groups’
VideoTech groups expressed discomfort with the uncertainty of exploring an unfamiliar problem, and procrastinated to some extent when the way forward was not clear. As the cases have shown, conceptual exploration required some persistence and faith in the process, assisted by individual contributions aimed at advancing the group’s epistemic object.
4.5.4 Summary: Epistemic agency and activity infrastructure
Groups exercised productive control over the range of elements of knowledge work, shared epistemic agency (Section 2.2), with varying success.
The Timeline group divided work and shared conceptual discussion was limited. However, viewing the same screen they talked about their topic, speculating on the shape of future schooling. They came to an impasse on search strategies and how to approach a topic, the future, for which they could find no source material. Their overall epistemic object produced a collection of information rather than an integrated whole.
The VideoGames group initially discussed concepts, but afterwards were more production-oriented, directed at finishing the video rather than developing its conceptual shape. The resulting produced object presented personal views of the issue, with little use of extrinsic sources, aided by the one- sided nature of the target TV ad format. The students showed abilities in use of ideas from journal articles in their personal reflections but did not use these abilities collaboratively.
The VideoMap group worked collaboratively on concept development for the length of the project, ranging through a variety of topics. They combined online sharing of articles and comments with face-to-face discussion of ideas, supplemented by extra-curricular meetings. A forward-thinking or projective aspect of agency was evident: they engaged with the wider educational debate and linked their ideas to what they might do in the future as teachers. In this group, delaying a decision on the format of the artefact allowed time for conceptual development.
The activity infrastructure of the VideoTech group facilitated conceptual discussion, with both online and in-person sharing of ideas. The practicalities of producing a single video from shared ideas and collected sources, was a driving concern and the synthesising objects created by Blake and River in response were key events in shared knowledge work. All group members provided items, conceptual and artefactual, for use in the final video.
The activity infrastructure is specifically assembled at the primary and secondary levels, in which groups produce or recognise affordances in interaction with technologies, objects and each other. The activity infrastructure of each group was an outcome of the type of activities the students believed necessary for the task and/or wanted to do. Infrastructure was more shaped by the students’ framing of the task than it was the case of infrastructure itself exerting a strong, direct influence on the type of knowledge work. That is, if students had a particular conception of how they wished to work, they acted accordingly. Simply establishing a Facebook Group, for example, did not guarantee deep engagement in the problem, but furnished students with usable tools for that purpose, if they were so inclined. The primary level of infrastructure included a mix of stated and tacit objectives and reflected both the inclinations and abilities of the groups in shared knowledge creation as well as artefact production.
The framing of the task was visible in the way students assembled and used infrastructure (processes and objects). Those groups that worked together on concepts used online
communications tools as well as meeting times for this, and created objects to share and manage ideas, maintaining enthusiasm in conceptual discussion. Groups who created a shared conceptual heap held a view of the task that supported this approach and conceptual work was shared early. The Timeline and VideoGames groups tended to treat the task as straight-forward reporting rather than knowledge creation. Each group illustrated a particular shape of activity infrastructure related to their level of knowledge creation.
Producing a digital object was perceived as creative and enjoyable and allowed more personal expression than the usual essay format; students felt less need to present perspectives from academic literature. Much of online digital media involves individual expression and creativity— YouTube channels and their makers are part of popular culture—and students showed an affiliation for those affordances of the format. The task aroused positive emotions related to personal
expression and creativity, which helped move framing away from the familiar. The task added complexity, with groups needing to write and answer a driving question, make a digital artefact and use it in a presentation. As an open-ended or ill-structured (though well-scaffolded) and non-routine format, it was not immediately clear how to complete the task. Students were unsure of what constituted good execution, as opposed to familiar criteria for written work, prompting “the dissociative dynamic that comes into play when practice ceases to be a procedural routine” (Knorr Cetina, 2001, p. 178). Students had to make more sense of how to proceed than if asked to produce an essay.
Within the two groups that most engaged with the problem and associated concepts, students expressed some dissatisfaction with the slow process. The groups in this study were still forming their understanding of group work and how to conduct research at university, including how to take others’ ideas and perspectives into their own scholarly commentary. Sean’s (VideoMap) realisation that research and discussion around a subject helped the group’s perspective become more specific, is an example of this understanding in formation.
Findings from the education groups provided the foundational ideas for defining synthesising objects, created by individual students in making sense of, extending and organising shared
knowledge. Synthesising objects play a role in organising and categorising a group’s knowledge heap and are a practical, material means for connecting individual and collective meaning-making (Cress & Kimmerle, 2018). A synthesising object is a type of epistemic object, because it is emergent through knowledge work, but one with a distinctive role that I was then able to test and expand through studying the engineering projects.
The task set for the education course groups was short and aimed at exposing students early in their degree to non-textual, digital means of expression, as well as to practice and reflect on project- based learning. In its comprehensive scaffolding for students in that short time, it would be difficult to attribute any teamwork inefficiencies to its design, and that is not my aim. My findings in the education project have produced a range of insights to inform design for epistemic agency and are combined with engineering findings and relevant design literature in Chapter 6. The next chapter presents the three engineering cases.
Chapter 5. Engineering cases
The three engineering cases are outlined in this chapter, preceded by a description of the task and its context. The project task was high stakes, theoretically spanning most of the semester and representing, in its constituent elements, 85% of the course final grade. Students were provided with very little scaffolding to guide their work.
The task and its context
The course in which the engineering groups were enrolled was a compulsory second-year-level course run in the first semester (March-June) of the academic year, in a four-year undergraduate engineering program. The course was in a progression of compulsory units in the Bachelor of Engineering dealing with engineering professional practice. The course guide included the aim of exposing students to the different specialisations available to them. It also covered “the process of engineering, solving problems, design and product development” as well as providing “an
opportunity to develop and practise generic skills such as written and oral communication” (course guide). The face-to-face component included one weekly two-hour lecture and a weekly three-hour practical, starting from week 3. This was the first time the course had been run in this form, that is, using relatively long and open team projects.
The intention of the course convenor was for students to use independent learning in tackling their projects: students were expected to use their experience and initiative to manage and complete the project, with minimal guidance or support resources (interview and course communications). This course asked for a different set of skills compared to other engineering units: as reported by the students, this and the preceding first year professional practice course were the only ones to feature group work, with other units focusing on individual technical knowledge and skills. The group project was central to the aims of the course in covering ‘soft’ professional or transferable skills (as opposed to ‘hard’ technical skills), such as ethics, critical thinking, research, teamwork and communication. The group task offered a selection of challenging project themes from which students were able to choose. The themes included: ‘Living on Mars,’ covering the issues and possible solutions for 20 people to live on Mars for a year; ‘Modernising a remote village in a developing country’ in which infrastructure solutions for a village of 5000 had to be developed with a budget of $200 per person; ‘Renewable energy solutions for Australia’ in which groups were asked to find what is needed to make Australia carbon neutral in its energy production; ‘Underwater life,’ studying solutions for living in an underwater biosphere; and a project working for a robotics camp overseas. Particular prac times - for classes of up to 25 - were associated with each theme and students were asked to form groups of four or five. Depending on student schedules, some themes may have been chosen related to timetabling rather than intrinsic interest. Each group was to cover “a specific engineering aspect of the project theme” (instructions) and expected to coordinate with the other groups on the larger project. This expectation of coordination was initially unclear to the case groups, and this aspect of coordinating approaches to an overarching solution was generally not present in their projects. The course convenor asked for the use of MATLAB, a commonly-used programming language in engineering and science, in the project, with coding to be submitted. The convenor expected more calculations in the report than were generally included by students (interview), although the task description was relatively vague on these requirements.
The main group assessment task was expected to show some grasp of the wider issues of engineering in both the written report and the oral presentation. The three components of the group project together added up to 85% of the mark for the course: 10% for the project outline; 45% for the project report, made up of 25% group mark and 20% individual contribution; and 30% for the presentation and a poster, again with an individual component. Students were asked to rate the level of contributions of each member of the group; this rating and tutor observations of
participation in practical classes were used to moderate individual marks. The remaining 15% was allocated to an individual technical task using MATLAB.
Of the three engineering case groups, one group chose the remote village project (‘Village’ group), focusing on housing, and the other two worked on renewable energy solutions, one group
presenting an array of options, (‘Renewables’ group), and the other concentrating on a single option, initially nuclear energy generally, but eventually narrowing to nuclear fusion (‘Nuclear’ group).