Beyond Small Groups: New Opportunities for Research in Computer-Supported Collective Learning
In this episode I unpack Kafai and Peppler’s (2011) article titled “Beyond small groups: New opportunities for research in computer-supported collective learning,” which is an analysis of participation within the Scratch community that compares and contrasts collaborative learning (i.e., learning within small groups) with collective learning (i.e., learning within massive groups).
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is Jared O'Leary
in this week's episode I'm unpacking
some scholarship in particular I'm
unpacking a paper by Yasmin could phi
and Kylie pep ler which is titled oat B
on small groups : new opportunities for
research and computer-supported
collective learning in quote as always
you can find links to the author's
google scholar profiles in the show
notes as well as a direct link to the
paper itself and in this particular one
I'm linking to research gate which
allows you to access the paper for free
so if we're actually interested in
reading this particular article all you
have to do is go to the show notes which
is found in your description or by
visiting Ghirardelli recom and simply
click on this episode's title all right
so here's the abstract for this paper
but cscl research has focused on
understanding and designing
collaborative learning in diverse
settings and configurations with support
of computers within this research
however most efforts have concentrated
on studying small group configurations
and thus examine what we would like to
call collaborative learning ie the
abilities needed to participate and
support collaborations of typically two
to five people much less emphasis has
been placed on studying massive
communities and participation in large
groups comment in today's social
networking sites and online gaming
cultures that would shift the focus to
collective learning ie the abilities
needed to participate and support
collaborations in massive groups in this
paper we identify key dimensions of
collective learning present observations
of online and local participation in one
open source web 2.0 community with over
outline a research agenda for computer
supported collective learning include
all right so that abstract does a good
job of kind of summarizing the overall
paper itself if I were to give a
one-sentence summary I'd say that this
paper is an analysis of participation
within the scratch community that
compares and contrasts collaborative
learning ie the learning within small
groups with collective learning ie
learning within massive groups okay so
the authors begin this particular paper
by discussing collaborative learning
which is learning that quote in the
sizes the abilities to participate in
small groups whether online or offline
or in combinations thereof in quote from
page 17 so it's important to note that
the authors suggest that collaborative
learning can occur in both online and
offline settings while many have found
that collaborative learning is useful
there are many kids who are learning in
online communities that have thousands
of members so not just like between one
and five people to collaborate with but
potentially hundreds or thousands of
people to learn from so the authors are
basically exploring what are the
potential implications of learning
within such spaces in particular on page
does the size of the group matter
unquote so this is a really good
question that is important for all
educators consider when engaging in any
kind of collaborative or collective kind
of learning process now a little bit
further in the intro the authors refer
to learning within such large
communities as quote collective learning
because it emphasizes the abilities to
participate and perform in collectives
and thus might be different from
participation in small groups in quote
from page 17 so as a quick summary of
the intro the author suggests that
although many people are already
discussing learning within small groups
Cuffy and pep ler in particular want to
explore learning within massive groups
now when this article is written it was
in 2011 so the author's mentioned in the
review of literature section that at the
time of writing there's not a lot of
research on this so some people for
example we're studying designing wiki
activities that were used in like
university classes or maybe even
after-school gaming clubs that had kids
participating in video games that had
potentially millions of players in it
however there was not a lot of empirical
research that kind of summarizes the
different learnings going on across the
spaces where that could be generalized
outside of there in particular on page
unclear what it means to participate
effectively in large-scale groups to
develop and foster a sense of community
and belonging and to design for
collective learning interactions in
quote now later the authors describe the
importance of collective learning and
here's kind of a summary of some of the
so this is from page 18 quote concepts
such as collective cognitive
responsibility indicate that
interactions in these online communities
could have different constraints and
affordances due to their massive number
of participants unstructured and
structured groups with concurrent
asynchronous and synchronous nature of
interactions ongoing persistence of
online life in absence of individual
presence in addition to the nature of
collaborative tasks and contributions in
quote so to kind of summarize their
review of literature and their little
introduction of the importance of
collective learning they mentioned that
not many people are discussing this
however there are a lot of people who
are engaging in these spaces if however
you are interested in reading some of
these scholars that they mentioned the
author last names are Boyd G and ito and
they kind of all have a lot of research
on learning within large online
communities or spaces
I've actually mentioned G in particular
in several other podcasts because he was
a professor of mine okay so in the next
main section the authors are talking
about some of the findings for this
particular study so again in 2011 or at
least at the time of the writing scratch
had about 1.2 million members and over
are significantly higher now the authors
point out a very important thing to
consider is that these two types of
learning that they're kind of comparing
and contrasting collaborative learning
and collective learning can and do occur
simultaneously within scratch so it's
not like you have to pick one or the
other and be like okay class today we're
going to only engage in collaborative
learning or we're only going to engage
in collective learning so for everything
that I'm about to say in terms of the
comparison between these two types of
learning just keep in the back of the
mind that both of these can occur and
honestly probably should occur to
encourage a range of participation and
engagement in the classes that you're
working with so on page 19 the authors
discuss collaborative learning
activities so here's a quote quote
collaborative activities include mostly
goal-oriented activities typically in
the classroom these would include small
group work team projects discussion
groups and so on
outside the classroom collaborative
activities include playing board games
most platform-style video games with
members of your family sitting on
committees or playing in a rock band in
the scratch online community
collaborative activities typically
revolve around the production of
particular types of scratch projects by
a small group of individuals that have
commonly met one another in the online
environment end quote
the authors then go on to kind of
highlight some scholarships that found
that people who collaboratively work
together not only completed a task
together such as an assignment but it
they also engaged in a way that provided
social and emotional support okay so
also on page 19 the authors and then
discuss some of the collective learning
activities so here's a quote quote
collective activities by contrast
include larger groups of individual with
participation that is less goal-oriented
and revolves more around sustained
enjoyed participation within the
community over time these types of
activities although sparse and classroom
settings are common particularly in
online affinity groups and in the arts
in the Performing Arts in particular
collective activities are common
including African dance circles or
Orchestra performances in quote now
while I totally understand the idea of
an orchestra kind of being viewed as a
collective learning activity I would
argue that a lot of large ensemble
experiences in particular don't
necessarily align with some of the
things that I'm going to talk about in a
minute when I compare and contrast
collaborative this versus collective
learning it's just slightly different in
particular when the authors are
discussing collective learning they talk
about how the roles are fluid and you're
able to kind of adapt as needed but in a
large ensemble setting that typically
doesn't occur so while I get that
everybody's kind of collectively working
together better to create something it
doesn't necessarily align with some of
the stuff that I'll mention in a minute
now the authors do mention that
collective learning not only helps
develop personal agency with coding but
it can also develop status as an expert
among peers or community members which i
think is very important it's great for
kids to kind of develop their own
individuals expertise and have that
expertise being recognized outside of a
small group the authors also highlight a
previous study that found collective
learning spaces incurred
a range of participation so not everyone
is doing the same thing this is an
important thing to note that everybody
is contributing in their own kind of
unique way in addition the authors also
suggests that some groups form around in
infinity so a shared interest within the
collective so for example if people are
really into anime or anime of the
American pronunciation then they might
get together as kind of a collective or
even like sub collectives within that so
for example if somebody is really into
nadu toh as opposed to Dragon Ball Z
they might get together with people who
are really into one anime versus another
now if there's one thing that I can
recommend in particular it's to check
out the table that is on page 20 this
table really kind of summarizes compares
and contrasts the two different
approaches for collaborative learning
and collective learning so I'm gonna
kind of give my own summary of that in
case you don't have access to the paper
itself which I do highly recommend
reading okay so the first comparison is
a comparison of size so the author
suggests a collaborative learning is
typically 2 to 5 people whereas
collective learning is more than 5 so it
could be like a whole class or maybe a
whole school or literally hundreds of
thousands of people now the activities
are also slated slightly different so in
collaborative learning they suggest that
the activities are goal-oriented
now activities within a collective tend
to come together around a shared
affinity so typically speaking it's not
that like let's say if there's a hundred
thousand people in the space they're not
all working towards the same goal
instead within that space there are
opportunities for groups to form around
a shared affinity or even for people to
just participate in a shared affinity
without necessarily having to define
themselves as a member of a group so
what I mean by that is that for example
with the anime if people are really into
not hotel they don't have to necessarily
work together with other people to
actually contribute Naruto projects
within scratch ok now comparing time
between collaborative and collective so
for a collaborative learning time is
usually short and it can be synchronous
or asynchronous and it's typically
organized by a group leader now in
collective however the time is typically
a synchronous forms of engagement over
longer periods of time so
months if not years if not decades of
time and while it is typically
asynchronous there are some synchronous
forms of collaboration or learning or
sharing and the time is typically
organized by the collective or maybe a
webmaster or multiple moderators of like
a discussion forum or something so for
example if they're going to create like
a competition around a particular
project or theme or idea
they might say okay here's a competition
and we have a deadline of this date
okay so leadership within these two
different types of learning groups in
collaborative learning the author
suggests that leadership is typically
organized by the teacher itself so for
example assigning roles within the group
or maybe even forcing rotation of those
roles within the groups however in
collective learning here's a quote from
page 20 quote in online communities
leadership is emergent decentralized and
distributed among a large group of
individuals collective leadership is
also an inherent to the role that
designers play in shaping an online
community but also co-constructed in the
community
unquote so if we're interested in
learning more about that kind of
approach to leadership I recommend
checking out James Paul gee he's got a
lot of readings related to affinity
spaces and like leadership within those
spaces I'll include some links to his
discussions on that in the show notes ok
so the next category labor so in
collaborative learning groups the labor
is usually through prescribed roles like
a previously mentioned and if any member
of the team or the group is absent it
kind of has a large impact on the group
so everybody needs to kind of engage in
a strong role within the group otherwise
the overall goal could be compromised on
the other hand in collective learning
groups members typically take on a
single but often fluid role that kind of
fits within the larger collective so
roles can be adapted as needed and
absenteeism doesn't really have a big
impact unless its widespread the reason
why is because if you just have
significantly more people who can
contribute to something it's ok if one
or two people are unable to contribute
within the given amount of time in
addition one of the things defining
factors is very different about
of learnings that people are able to
actually lurk or participate on the
periphery without impacting the
collectives goal this is another one of
those reasons why I would say that
collective learning is very different
from most large ensemble settings like
orchestras and bands and whatnot it's
because you're typically not supposed to
engage on the periphery in the final
section in this table that again is on
page 20 is knowledge so in collaborative
learning knowledge is distributed among
present members and does not build on
the efforts of prior groups or what they
refer to as institutional learning
collective learning on the other hand
the knowledge is typically stored and
accessible to a large community so
although it is distributed among
individuals across time and space the
members are able to continue within the
space over extended periods of time so
new members are able to learn from
veterans this is a very key distinction
so it makes it so that like if we were
to think of collective learning within
an educational space not only with kids
to be able to learn from everybody who's
present or at school at the time but
potentially people who were in the same
class multiple years ago okay so in the
discussions section the authors conclude
with the discussion on how there needs
to be more research on such spaces and
learning that potentially occurs within
them and here's that quote from page 22
quote we also need to consider issues
about ethics that invariably come up in
the context of collective production
sharing and commenting and are
particularly relevant in the context of
schooling that still favors individual
recognition what does it mean when
members contribute to a large project
Al's is recognized
what about remixes that take up existing
projects and modify them a practice very
common in network communities unquote
these are some excellent questions that
consider in particular if you aren't
interested in collective learning within
these spaces that you are working with
you're going to need to figure out what
forms of participation and engagement
count and how are you going to allow or
encourage kids to be on the periphery
and maybe not contribute to anything in
a substantial way if so how do you
assess that also the authors mention a
couple of scholars who kind of explore
the online learning in spaces like this
that might involve what they're
describing as collective learning in
learning more about it check out the
discussion section at the end and read
some of those authors that are in there
or you could check out the ethics
section of chapter three of my
dissertation which I link directly to in
the show notes and it kind of talks
about is this kind of research ethical
and if so when all right so that was
kind of the main summary of the study
itself now I'm gonna kind of talk about
some of my lingering questions or
thoughts so the first one is how my
education courage both collaborative and
collective learning in a shared space so
as an example in my classes we had
several different programming languages
that kids can pick from if they were
working in scratch they could then share
their projects with me and I would often
share them in two studios and those
studios were accessible by anyone in
grades second all the way up through
eighth grade so an eighth grader could
share something with in the studio that
a second grader could look at and vice
versa in addition in some of the other
languages that I encourage in the
classes that I facilitated I use online
folders to kind of share code or
creations that kids make in the classes
that I worked with this allowed kids to
kind of learn from each other in
experiment from each other in kind of
made a closed circuit collective
learning environment so that instead of
just encouraging collective learning
within the classroom itself so that like
if there were a class of 30 kids all 30
of them could learn from each other they
were then able to kind of asynchronously
learn from other kids in other classes
by looking at and reading through code
or remix in code that others had created
in other classes this was not just
horizontal so it wasn't like only third
graders could look at third grader
projects it was anybody from second
grade up through eighth grade could look
at any project from any of those grade
levels which by the way when I would
work with middle school kids in
particular and they were working on a
project that I was like I don't know if
that's school appropriate or not
I just engage with the discussion with
them like hey this project is likely
going to be viewed by a 2nd grader do
you think that this would be appropriate
for them to look at that content or to
engage with that content so a little
quick tip there ok so my next question
is how might we encourage collective
learning that builds off of prior
efforts so in particular one of the
things that I love thinking through with
this idea of collective learning and
just
like asynchronous forms of learning and
informal learning and whatnot is people
are able to learn from others who may
have been in that space years ago and
have not participated since so one of
the things that I tried to do in a
university class that I designed and
facilitated was make us so that we all
kind of created this wiki and the idea
was that every single semester we were
gonna keep adding to and building off of
that wiki a current class could go back
multiple semesters or years and kind of
build off of the work from prior classes
to kind of collectively create this kind
of wiki now unfortunately I ended up not
having enough time to teach that class
for multiple semesters so I only got to
do it for one semester so maybe it would
have worked maybe it wouldn't have not
sure on that note though a follow-up
question that I have is how might we
find balance between reinventing that's
already been done and breaking new
ground
so with that wiki idea the idea was to
kind of create a shared collective
understanding of the particular subject
of that class well much of what we were
already discussing and engaging with was
content that was already done this in
particularly this was a history class so
what I was struggling with was that
balance between a synthesis of
understanding from the collective people
in the class with okay really were just
kind of rephrasing what has already been
done like many of these questions I
don't really have a firm answer to this
it's just something that I recommend
thinking through if you're going to
consider doing this kind of learning
another question that I have is how
might such a community encourage or
account for continued participation so
building off of the prior discussion
think about what happens if somebody
graduates or maybe they complete a
course how could they continue to
contribute to this space or how could
future people within the class reach
back out to people who previously took
the class to kind of ask for
clarification of something that they
created now I know this is a lot to ask
from people and I imagine you wouldn't
have great participation from people who
have finished a class wanting to go back
and like continue to add to it but
having interviewed multiple people on
this podcast who have suggested now
bringing back kids who have graduated to
come back and share what they have
learned and the thing
that they have done why computer science
in particular or coding is very valuable
to them I think this is one way that we
can do that another way that we can do
it so not just bringing them in as like
a guest lecturer or something but having
people like that come back into our
shared collective learning space and
continue to contribute to it in some way
one of the last questions that I have is
who has access to view or contribute to
such a space or community so this is an
important one to consider especially if
you're in an elementary space is who's
going to be able to contribute to this
because while on one hand I'm really all
for like engagement from not only people
within the school but people outside of
the school to bring their own expertise
into something and engage in expert
level conversations on the other hand
bringing in outsiders from school can
create some serious security or digital
citizenship concerns so just make sure
when you're considering this you need to
think about what platforms you can only
use who can contribute to those
platforms in what ways you have like
moderator control over those
contributions or have to like give
permission before things are posted and
things like that
alright so that's kind of a summary of
the article itself and then just some of
my lingering questions or thoughts as
always you can find resources and
questions and other relevant materials
to this particular episode in the show
notes in your app and I thank you so
much for listening I really hope that
you share this with somebody who might
be interested in learning more about
collective learning and how it differs
from collaborative learning and I hope
you consider trying to use both forms of
group learning within the classes that
you facilitate especially if you are
right now working in an online
environment which many of us have been
due to kovin 19 thank you so much for
listening I hope you stay tuned for next
week which will be another interview and
then two weeks from now another
unpacking scholarship episode hope
you're all staying safe and are having a
wonderful day
Article
Kafai, Y. B., & Peppler, K. A. (2011). Beyond small groups: New opportunities for research in computer-supported collective learning. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference (CSCL) Conference Proceedings, I, 17–24.
Abstract
“CSCL research has focused on understanding and designing collaborative learning in diverse settings and configurations with support of computers. Within this research, however, most efforts have concentrated on studying small group configurations and thus examined what we would like to call ‘collaborative’ learning (i.e., the abilities needed to participate and support collaborations of typically two to five people). Much less emphasis has been placed on studying massive communities and participation in large groups prominent in today’s social networking sites and online gaming cultures that would shift the focus to ‘collective’ learning (i.e., the abilities needed to participate and support collaborations in massive groups). In this paper, we identify key dimensions of collective learning, present observations of online and local participation in one open-source Web 2.0 community with over 630,000 members, called Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), and outline a research agenda for computer-supported collective learning.”
My One Sentence Summary
This analysis of participation within the Scratch community compares and contrasts collaborative learning (i.e., learning within small groups) with collective learning (i.e., learning within massive groups).
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
How might educators encourage both collaborative and collective learning in a shared space?
How might we encourage collective learning that builds off of prior efforts?
How might we find balance between reinventing what's already been done and breaking new ground?
How might such a community encourage or account for continued participation?
Who has access to view or contribute to such a space or community?
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
Applications of Affinity Space Characteristics in [Computer Science] Education
In this episode I unpack my (2020) publication titled “Applications of affinity space characteristics in music education,” which has twelve characteristics of informal learning spaces that I will discuss in relation to computer science education.
How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
Lifelong Kindergarten with Mitch Resnick
In this interview with Mitch Resnick, we discuss misconceptions people have around the four P’s (Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play) in Mitch’s book, encouraging depth of understanding while playing, what has surprised Mitch during his career, encouraging online communication and collaboration without creating artificial engagement, what Mitch wishes we’d see more of and discuss in CS education, our pet peeves with unplugged activities and computational thinking, accounting for survivorship bias with Scratch, expanding our focus on equity and inclusion to include both the “who” and the “how,” the importance of experimenting and learning through play, and much more.
Rhizomatic Learning with Catherine Bornhorst, Jon Stapleton, and Katie Henry
In this panel discussion with Catherine Bornhorst, Jon Stapleton, and Katie Henry, we discuss what rhizomatic learning is and looks like in formalized educational spaces, affordances and constraints of rhizomatic learning, how to support individual students within a group setting, standards and rhizomatic learning, why few people know and use rhizomatic learning approaches, how to advocate for and learn more about rhizomatic learning, and much more.
Music Making in Scratch: High Floors, Low Ceilings, and Narrow Walls?
In this episode I unpack Payne and Ruthmann’s (2019) publication titled “Music making in Scratch: High floors, low ceilings, and narrow walls,” which problematizes the limitations of making music with Scratch.
Some of the authors I mentioned who explore spaces that might have collective learning
Read chapter three of my dissertation to learn more about the ethics of this kind of research
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter
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