Leveraging Researcher Multivocality for Insights on Collaborative Learning

This workshop continues the trajectory of a series of prior workshops. At ICLS 2008 ("A Common Framework for CSCL Interaction Analysis"), we explored dimensions along which analytic efforts can be characterized, and attempted to identify a common framework that would enable comparison of analyses and building shared analytic tools. Confronted with the multivocality that makes such unification difficult, we shifted our focus at CSCL 2009 ("Common Objects for Productive Multivocality in Analysis") to identifying the basis for dialogue between different traditions. One major conclusion was that multiple analyses of shared data sets provide a promising basis for discussion, these data sets constituting "boundary objects" (rather than "common objects") that make discourse possible. At the Alpine Rendez-vous 2009 ("Pinpointing Pivotal Moments in Collaboration"), we followed up on this conclusion by having researchers from different theoretical and methodological traditions analyze the same data sets. The analyses were focused on the identification of "pivotal moments" in collaboration. Different conceptions of pivotal moments were identified, but in all cases they provided good starting points for further analysis of how learning arises from interaction. At ICLS 2010 ("Productive Multivocality in the Analysis of Collaborative Learning"), we expanded the corpora on which researchers from different theoretical and methodological traditions performed their analyses and we proposed an initial structure for a book focused on the multiple analyses of shared data, arising from our different gatherings. The objective of this new workshop proposal "Leveraging Researcher Multivocality for Insights on Collaborative Learning" is twofold. First, we will discuss how the multiple analyses carried out on each paradigmatic corpus we chose from previous workshops contributed to specific new insights on collaborative learning. Secondly, we will build dialogue between complementary researcher views that can be introduced into the book