Paper 4: Classroom Studies: Expanding our Understanding of Collaboration Through Analysis of Nonverbals in Small Group Interactions

• In Event: Learning from Implementation Research: How Curriculum, Professional Learning, AI Tools and Classroom Studies Can Support AI-Literacy

Abstract

Purpose
This paper investigates students’ nonverbal behaviors during collaborative activities to broaden the conceptualization of collaboration and inform future refinements of our AI-partner embedded units.

Perspectives
Collaborative learning is described as two or more individuals working together on a shared activity (Dillenbourg, 1999). Learning emerges within this shared activity (often problem-solving), demonstrated by building shared knowledge, creating joint artifacts, or improving performance (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995; Hmelo-Silver, 2004). In the Moderation Unit, students engage in open-ended tasks, where the goal is not to arrive at a correct answer, but to critically think while building shared understanding and developing consensus. While collaboration is typically analyzed by participants’ verbal contributions to the group, nonverbal behaviors (e.g., gaze, posture, and gesture) are integral to collaborative interactions (Barron, 2003) and can offer novel insights about the collaborative process.

Methods
We analyzed two jigsaw lessons (Aronson & Patnoe, 1997) from the Moderation unit. In lesson three (L3), students independently read community agreements generated in different online communities and compared them. In Lesson 4 (L4), students read, summarized, and ranked different moderation approaches based on their effectiveness in preventing harmful online interactions.

Videos were screened to ensure high audio and video quality and that all group members were visible most of the time. We then randomly selected four five-minute video clips from L3 and four from L4 for this analysis and transcribed them by utterance. We applied the [redacted for review] framework (Authors, 2023) to each utterance. This framework captures nonverbal interactions of each student along three modalities–eye gaze, hand motions (tool usage and pointing), and body movements (leaning and head nodding). Two researchers double coded 20% of the videos for inter-rater reliability. They met to discuss and agree on discrepancies, then one researcher coded the remaining videos.

Results and Discussion
Students exhibited high, often synchronous, individual attention and frequently looked at one another during discussions, indicating high levels of shared attention. However, joint visual attention was limited. Similarly, students mostly engaged with individual tools, showing minimal use of shared tools. These behaviors suggest students were independently working, while periodically engaging in discussion. This behavior aligned with the unit’s structure, encouraging collaborative dialogue followed by individual reflection. Students’ use of the common tool was higher in L3 than L4, despite both lessons involving jigsaw. This further suggests that the participation structures employed within the activity (e.g., one student being assigned a “scribe” role to take notes on the common tool during group discussion, versus each student writing in their individual handouts after discussion), shaped the groups’ joint interactions.

Contribution
Our study contributes to an expanded understanding of collaboration in open-ended tasks. Our findings also highlight the need to consider how task design shapes opportunities for interaction during collaboration. Future work will examine whether and how these nonverbal behaviors link to students’ verbal interactions, to further refine the lessons within the unit and the models underlying our AI partners.

Authors

• Indrani Dey, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Collette Heskett, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Mon-Lin Ko, University of Colorado - Boulder