Amanda Harris (Sussex)
Creating contexts for productive peer collaboration: some design considerationsFriday 2 March 2007 (week 8)
Building technology enhanced learning contexts that work involves increasing our understanding of how we can model learners' affective and cognitive profiles, the contexts within which they learn and the interactions between learner and context. In this talk I describe how achievement goal theory might be used to inform the design of both models of learners and of their context. I present evidence relating to the influence of goal orientation, both personal and contextual, on children's collaborative interactions whilst completing computer-based tasks. This work suggests that mastery goals engender a willingness to engage in the process of argumentation and discussion, which are important features of effective collaborative learning. By contrast, performance goals lead learners to try and demonstrate their ability using their collaborative partner to affirm their own competence. This informs the design of motivational learner models in collaborative contexts. In addition, we found that it is possible to encourage a particular goal orientation in a learner through manipulations to the task presentation, and in so doing to engender more productive styles of collaborative interaction. This finding informs the design of the collaborative context. However, a primary challenge in this process is the development of methodologies which account for the complex interaction between context, learning and collaboration. In this talk I suggest a novel approach which was developed as part of the above research and which may be a first step toward integrating characteristics of the learner and of the context.