Investigating Collaborative Meaning-Making in an Open, Peer Production Environment

• In Event: Characterizing How Students Learn Through Collaborative Activity

Abstract

This study investigates collaborative meaning making by analyzing breakdowns and repairs of understanding in an online, open, peer production environment (Open Source Software). Guiding theoretical frameworks include Roschelle and Teasley’s Joint Problem Space and Stahl’s Group Cognition. It uses an ethnomethodologically-influenced discourse analysis to analyze 65 discussion threads from an Open Source Software forum tailored towards new, novice-level users. Preliminary findings suggest that rich details of collaborative meaning making can be found by analyzing breakdowns in group understanding and the attempts to repair understanding through linguistic, computer-mediated and graphical means. Its scholarly significance offers to potentially enhance understanding of underlying interactional processes that inform problem-solving activities among emergent, distributed and self-organized groups.

Authors

• Phil Tietjen, The Pennsylvania State University - University Park

• Priya Sharma, The Pennsylvania State University