Beyond Connectivity: Enactment and Distribution of Expertise at the Intersection of Digital and In-Person Collaboration

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Living and Learning in the Digital Age: Exploring the Tensions and Possibilities of Transmedia Activity

Abstract

Objectives
This paper describes the collaborative work between undergraduates as they engaged with their peers at the intersection of digital and in-person activity systems (Engeström, 2001); specifically, a course’s digital collaborative network and in-person laboratory/discussion sessions. In doing so, I address the following research questions: 1) How do undergraduate novice teachers enact expertise in a variety of digital and in-person learning interactions with one another?; and 1a) What is the regularity in these enactments of expertise, and how do they vary across these digital and in-person interactions? I answer these questions by presenting analyses of two iterations of this design-based (Gutierrez, 2016; Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016) research project.

Theoretical Framework
This project brings together Actor-network theory (Latour, 1996) and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 2001) to examine how collaboration unfolds in situated practice and is mediated by social interaction and the use of cultural tools (Cole, 1996) at the intersection of the digital and face-to-face. To this end, this study made use of robust data analytics and social interaction analysis (Goodwin, 2000) in order to describe the relational (Edwards, 2017) and sociomaterial (Latour, 1987) aspects of meshworking activity by students as they engaged in embodied participation (Goodwin, 2007) in a face-to-face and online discussion settings.

Methods
Video and audio were logged on a variety of metadata, interviews transcribed, and digital artifacts analyzed using multimodal analysis (Hull & Nelson, 2005). Codes were developed inductively (Bogdan & Biklen, 1997). Through these analyses micro-moments were examined to gain an understanding of how meaning-making mediated in face-to-face and virtual interactions.

Data
The study draws from 60 hours of classroom video data, 15 hours of interviews, and 400 digital artifacts produced by 15 students.

Results
Through analyses of two design iterations of the study, the following theories of collaboration and learning emerge: 1) Sustained attention to the social organization of learning in the design of a hybrid course resulted in collaboration at the intersection of the digital and in-person interactions that emerge as meshworks characterized by careful relationship building, and the creation, sharing, and remixing of syncretic (Gutiérrez, 2008) digital artifacts/texts across the digital and physical terrains; and 2) Through this collaborative meshwork of enactment of expertise, undergraduates begin to collectively develop models for teaching and learning. These primary findings suggest that learning environments can be designed to use digital technologies in ways that foster relational equity (DiGiacomo & Gutiérrez, 2016) amongst learners.

Significance
This study has implications for studying the role of digital tools in fostering collaboration in higher education. Moreover, it complicates notions of connectivity and engagement as the primary motivator for the design of learning environments that integrate emergent technologies.

Author

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of Colorado - Boulder