CAREER: Collaborative Learning with Classroom Networks: Integrating Technological and Pedagogical Innovations

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

This CAREER grant funds the study of teaching practices in a year long high school algebra course that integrates hand-held and other electronic devices throughout the year. Of particular interest is how these technologies can support learners' capacity to efficiently and effectively draw on the distributed intelligences that technical and social networks make available. The investigation focuses on collaborative learning tasks that are centered on collective mathematical objects, such as functions, expressions, coordinates, shapes or sets that participants in a group must jointly manipulate through networked computers. The study addresses two research questions: 1) What novel forms of student learning do collaborative designs for classroom networks support? 2) What kinds of teaching practices are made possible by classroom networks and made necessary by collaborative designs? One line of investigation is to use a series of design experiments in which new technology designs provide a context for exploring student learning through collaborative problem-solving activities and investigations. A second line involves alternating between two different settings for conducting four successive year-long cycles of those design experiments: a set of high school algebra classrooms taught by teachers who serve as collaborative partners in the development and implementation of new activity designs, and another high school algebra classroom in which the principal investigator will serve as the teacher.