ABSTRACT
Facilitating student-centered peer learning is difficult and the limited instructional resources often mandate allocating this resource where it is most needed—to groups that are having some difficulty. In a class with six or seven groups, well-functioning groups are rarely the focus of instructor facilitation. This chapter will look at what happens in effective groups—the ones we rarely see. Video data provides the opportunity for in-depth analysis of and reflection on learning in such groups. Although some uses of video data have focused on the development of ideas (e.g., Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2005; Powell, Francisco, & Maher, 2003), in this work, we have purposely selected video to develop theory about factors involved in effective social knowledge construction (Hall, 2000). Interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) has helped us to identify two key features of such groups; 1) “soft leaders,” individuals who help facilitate the group, and 2) “hard artifacts,” tools that serve as a focus for negotiations. This approach to data analysis is consistent with the view that cognition is situated in social interactions. Understanding how cognition is distributed in effective groups has important implications for scaffolding collaborative learning, and video analysis is a key tool in understanding how cognition is distributed.
