Comparing the Roles of Representations in Fact to Face and Online Collaborations

This paper reports an empirical study comparing the roles of representations in supporting face to face versus distance collaborative learning. Findings indicate that while face to face collaborators primarily use knowledge representations to summarize verbal reasoning, distributed collaborators also use knowledge representations to propose ideas before they are discussed, particularly ideas supported by the categorical affordances of the knowledge representation medium. The work suggests that designers of online learning environments should support fluid crosstalk between multiple representations, because online discussions will be distributed across all available representations