Entering the Dialogic: Disengaged Students and Multivoicedness in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Environments

• In Event: Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Learning Sciences SIG Poster Session

Abstract

Exploratory talk had become the 'Holy Grail' of pedagogy, yet disengaged students sometimes resist talking in this manner. The paper deals with the challenge of bridging the gap by presenting a one student's case study and describing his transition into a more dialogic approach through the use of CSCL tools integrated into humanities curricula. By tracing the student's trajectories of participation throughout successive discussions, the notion of multivoicedness is conceptualized as a necessary phase in the emergence of the dialogic. We explain why disengaged students' discursive needs cannot be fully addressed in an ordinary instructional discourse, and address CSCL affordances' mechanisms that help making multivoicedness tolerable: suspension of immediate response; elimination of prosody; less socially-signed environment; the 'general-addressee' effect.

Authors

• Benzi Slakmon, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Baruch C. Schwarz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem