Understanding Synchronous Computer-Mediated Classroom Discussion through Cultural-Historical Activity Theory

This study is about graduate students’ discourse practices in classroom text-based synchronous computermediated discussions (SCMD). Cultural historical activity theory (in short, Activity Theory) is the primary theoretical lens through which the data are analyzed. Engeström’s (1987) Activity System model among the various theoretical positions or perspectives of activity theorists has guided the overall process of the study, especially having the researcher focus on the identification and description of the model’s six key elements: subject, object, tool, community, rule, and division of labor. Several emerging themes were identified: instead of a single utterance, a topical pair needs to be investigated as a unit of analysis in SCMD research; a collective unit of actions emerges through the discourse activity; and, finally, an ecological view is needed to understand an activity system as a whole. Based on these emerging themes, the implications for future research are discussed as a conclusion. INTRODUCTION This study is about graduate students’ discourse practices in classroom text-based synchronous computermediated discussion (SCMD). Since the introduction of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) to educational practices, its technological affordances of both real-time and remote interactions have been supposed to enrich and promote students’ social interactions, and, consequently, their learning (Beauvois & Jamieson, 1997; Dickey, 2003; Duemer et al., 2002; Kern, 1995; Lobel, Swedburg, & Neubauer, 2002; Warschauer, 1996; Sotillo, 2000). This assumption has made more and more educators adopt the technology in their practices to facilitate peer discussions and interactions. Although the synchronous communications through wired or wireless network of computers are prevalent in current days, the pedagogical application of the technology has not been fully explored, and, furthermore, theoretical explication of it does not have sound foundation that most researchers agree upon yet (De Laat, & Lally, 2003; Luppicini, 2007). Researchers have emphasized the needs of more comprehensive theoretical framework, such as Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Activity Theory), that provides both socio-cultural and systemic accounts for the educational use of the technology (Resta & Laferrière, 2007; Tolmie & Boyle, 2000). This study is an explorative attempt to use Activity Theory as a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of students’ discourse practices in SCMD. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore and describe students’ discourse activity with SCMC technology through the lens of Activity Theory, and to deepen and broaden our understandings on Activity Theory in CMC research through the lens of SCMD. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ACTIVITY THEORY Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of learning is a root of Activity Theory. He introduced the concept of toolmediation in human activity to illustrate the uniqueness of human intellect (Vygotsky, 1978). According to him, we cannot successfully identify higher mental function of human psychology with any theoretical assumption of direct encounters between a subjective agent and objective world. It will lead us only to either material determinism in which the agent is considered a sum of reflected objective world, which does not take the dynamic roles of human beings in practices into account, or cultural reductionism in which the symbolized culture in the human mind determines the interpretation of the world, which is not capable of explaining the critical role of the objective world in human intellects. To explicate the unique aspects of the human mind, Vygotsky (1978) devised the concept of tool-mediation in human activity, in which a subject and the external world are mediated by material and psychological means produced in the past of the subjects’ individual or the societal history. Of course, this is not the first attempt to introduce a mediator to explain human mind. For example, Piaget, influenced by Emmanuel Kant’s categories of mind, suggests schema as such a mediator (Duncan, 1995). An individual cannot come across the external world directly. The encounter is only possible through schema that belongs to the individual who is actively trying to interpret the world to survive in it. To achieve equilibrium between the inner schema and the outer condition, the cognizant is continuously assimilating the external world and accommodating the internal schema, which leads the genetic process of cognitive development. In his framework, the cognitive schema mediates an individual’s biological needs of seeking equilibrium and the external environments’ affordances affecting and limiting the TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – April 2015, volume 14 issue 2 Copyright © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology 220 realization of the agent’s needs. In addition to that, he argues that, being consistent with Kantian metaphysical epistemology, the cognitive development follows universal structure, which is presumed to individual experiences a priori. Similar to Piagetian theory, Vygotsky’s cultural tool needs also be seen as a lens through which a person can have relations with the external world and that forms or conditions the relationship, not a simple device to facilitate human activity. In the system of tool-mediated activity, the subject representing the human mind can only run into material environment through the help of cultural artifacts or instruments, which is the role of cognitive schema in Piagetian theory. What distinguishes Vygotsky’s psychological tool from Piaget’s cognitive schema as a mediating means is the social origin of the mediator (Wertsch, 1998). Contrary to Piagetian accounts based on biological heredities and metaphysical structure, Vygotsky places the social origins of the auxiliary tools and the developmental stages at the center of his theory. Vygotsky’s mediator is also a social product of one’s own or others in the society, while the cognitive schema of Piaget is based on the universal structure given ‘a priori’ to any individual’s experiences. Extending and elaborating Vygotsky’s idea, Leont’ev (1978), his student and colleague, proposed an activity theory called Cultural Historical Activity Theory later. He asserts that the object of psychological study should be neither objective behavior nor subjective consciousness of the human mind, but the whole object-oriented activity. In practice, a subject, participating in object-oriented activity, confines herself to the condition of the object to realize her intention, and the object is subjugated under the motive of the subject. He calls the former as “objectification of the subject” and the latter as “subjectification of the object” (Leont'ev, 1978). Subject and object do not exist indifferently any more, but interdependently in human activity, which is the way that Activity Theory resolves the traditional contradiction of subject versus object. Leont’ev (1981) distinguishes three levels of activity – activity, action, and operation – by analyzing the division of labors in collective practices, which are connected to collective motive, individual goal, and the condition of material and semiotic tools in order. The action of a pitcher throwing a ball to a catcher in a baseball game cannot be understood without the consideration of the collective motive of the team, winning a game, and the operations of the material and semiotic tools such as balls, gloves, game rules, and so forth. While Vygotsky’s model is based on dyadic interaction between a child and an adult or a more advanced other, Leont’ev’s framework extends it to individual actions in a collective activity, which can be properly construed only through systemic lenses. Engeström (1987) articulates and visually depicts Vygotsky and Leont’ev’s arguments. He situates Vygotsky’s tool-mediated and object-oriented action into Leont’ev’s collective activity, and formulates an activity system model, in which social factors such as rule, community, and division of labor are incorporated to illustrate the interconnectedness of each component of the system. In the system, community is defined as a group of people who share the same general object; rule refers to the explicit and implicit regulations, norms, and conventions that constrain actions and interactions within the system; and division of labors indicates that the division of tasks between members of the community both horizontally and vertically. METHODS Site The site of this study was a graduate course offered in the Department of Educational Psychology at a large research university in the southern United States in the fall semester of 2009. The course, open to both master’slevel and doctoral students, had been offered every other year for more than 20 years. The instructor had been employed the classroom online discussion using either synchronous or asynchronous CMC technology since 1994. It was basically a seminar-type course for advanced graduate students, in which peer discussions in both face-to-face and CMC modes were the primary classroom activities rather than teacher-led lectures. Students were required to meet weekly to discuss three or four articles on theories of writing and composition in general. Each week, the class met first in a classroom in which the instructor and students sit at tables arranged in a large circle encompassing all the class members. After a short announcement and lecture-type summary of the readings, the instructor typically began the oral discussion by inviting the students to share their ideas on the readings with other classmates and to raise any issues related to the topics. The oral discussion usually lasted for an hour and 30 ~ 45 minutes. After a 10 to 15 minute break, students walked to a computer lab, and continued the online discussion using a Web-based chat system. The computer lab was configured to be more relevant to lecture type activity or TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – April 2015, volume 14 issue 2 Copyright © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology 221 individually separated works than small group collaborations, which turned out to be helpful for students to focus on the discussion displayed on each monitor. Other sounds, however, such as typing keyboards, clicking mouse buttons, and laughing, were somewhat distracting for students’ concentration. During each session of online discussion, students saw a window on their screens, embedded in a Web page, with two panes separated by a horizontal line. In the top pane, they read the messages as they were posted. Whenever a participant sent a comment, it was posted to the discussion in the order received by the server. Comments were displayed in the top pane chronologically, one after the other, with the ordinal numbers and the authors’ names. All comments previously posted in the discussion were available for the participants to read at any time. If a participant intended to read a comment posted earlier in the discussion, he or she might simply scroll up the list in the top pane to locate it. In the bottom pane, students composed their own messages by typing and editing just as they would do with word processing software. Unlike other current synchronous instant messaging programs, the software did not provide any functionality of noticing if others were composing their message currently. The users could not have any indication of whether others were composing a message until the comments were posted. A participant had to hit the “enter” or “return” key to send a message, and it appeared in the top pane as a part of the public discussion. Participants Of the nine students enrolled in the course on the ‘theory and practice of writing seminar,’ six were women and two were men. The students came from various programs in the college of education at the doctoral level: three students from Educational Psychology; three students from Language and Literacy; two students from Foreign Language Education (FLE); and one student from Special Education. This group of students was also diverse in terms of ethnicity. There were two Asian, two Mexican-American, and five white Americans. Data sources The primary source of data was the transcript of SCMD. There were 13 online synchronous discussion sessions out of 14 classes. The first session was a kind of exercise for students to experience the SCMD, which lasted about 10 minutes, and there were no online session at the last class meeting when students and the teacher met at a place outside the campus. Except for the first exercise session, the members as a group produced 82 (the seventh session) to 158 (the second session) messages for about 30 to 45 minutes. The transcripts were saved on the server as a downloadable text file. As secondary data sources, weekly readings, field notes from the observation of classroom oral discussions, recorded audio-files of them, and other documents that students wrote as class assignments were collected and analyzed as needed. Note on trustworthiness Lincoln and Guba (1985) have suggested various techniques to establish trustworthiness of qualitative research. This study employed some of their techniques: prolonged engagement, persistent observation, triangulation, peer debriefing, and keeping a reflexive journal. To minimize possible distortions that might result from my presence in the classroom discussion, even as a silent observer, I sustained the engagement with the participants from the beginning to the end of the semester (prolonged engagement); participated in and took field notes of every classroom discussion to avoid any biased interpretation based on partially collected data (persistent observation). Triangulation is the use of multiple sources of data, multiple settings, and multiple methods of data collection to support emerging research themes and to explain the research findings (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). As described earlier, this study had a variety of data sources including audio files of classroom oral discussions, field notes from classroom observations, assigned readings, and other documents produced by students as well as the transcripts of SCMD sessions, which were collected utilizing multiple methods. The evidence from these different sources and different methods was continuously explored, connected, compared, and synthesized to construe the complicated structure and dynamics of SCMD. The findings from on-going analyses and the interpretations of them were discussed with other colleagues who were not directly participating in the study (peer debriefing), and I recorded thoughts, decisions, questions and insights related to the research (keeping a reflexive journal). From my personal experiences with content analyses in SCMD, I expected that there would be many instances that have no clear evidence of what the comment means, which message it is responding to, what the primary purpose of the speech act is, and so forth. I used short and informal interviews with participants, as needed, to lessen the ambiguity of the data (member TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – April 2015, volume 14 issue 2 Copyright © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology