Interactivity

Draft

Examples of specific interactivity levels

Ploetzner, Dillenbourg & Traum (1999) distinguish five different levels of interactivity with respect to the settings in which explanations might be constructed in a CSCL environment:

1. Explaining to oneself: During the attempt to understand something (e.g., instructional material), an individual might try to explain it to him or herself. While self-explanations may frequently be expressed silently, only self-explanations expressed aloud can beenstudied experimentally.
2. Explaining to a passive and anonymous listener: An individual might explain to somebody he/she does not know and who just listens. In such a setting it might be investigated, for example, whether the explainer better monitors the construction of explanations as compared to a self-explanation setting.
3. Explaining to a passive listener: An individual might explain to somebody he/she knows and who just listens. In such a setting it might be examined whether individuals tailor the construction of explanations to specific listeners.
4. Explaining to somebody who responds in a constrained way: An individual might explain to somebody who responds to his/her explanations in a constrained way. For instance, the individual who receives the explanations might only indicate his/her understanding or non-understanding. In such a setting it might be scrutinized how the listener's responses affect the construction of explanations.
5. Mutually explanantion: Two individuals might mutually explain to each other without any imposed constraints. In this case, explanation is no longer something that is exclusively directed from one individual to a second, but rather corresponds to a process in which two individuals attempt to negotiate and, at least partially, share their understanding of the domain under consideration.

A note on the relation with the tool

Just two quotes for now:

“Because of the interactive nature of technology and the power of its information-processing capabilities, Jonassen (1996) proposes that when students learn with technology, it becomes a "mindtool." He defines mindtools as "computer-based tools and learning environments that have been adapted or developed to function as intellectual partners with the learner in order to engage and facilitate critical thinking and higher-order learning" (p. 9). Using commonly available software (databases, spreadsheets, electronic mail, multimedia, hypermedia, and others), learners employ technology to both construct and represent knowledge. This concept is similar to Pea's (1985) conception of a cognitive technology as " . . . any medium that helps transcend the limitations of the mind, such as memory, in activities of thinking, learning, and problem solving" (p. 168).” (Boethel and Dimok, 1999: 17).

“An activity consists of acting upon an object in order to realize a goal and give concrete form to a motive. Yet the relationship between the subject and the object is not direct. It involves mediation by a third party: the instrument [...] An instrument cannot be confounded with an artifact. An artifact only becomes an instrument through the subject's activity. In this light, while an instrument is clearly a mediator between the subject and the object, it is also made up of the subject and the artifact.” (B"guin & Rabardel, 2000, P.175)

See also cognitive tool, instrumentation

References

• B"guin and Rabardel, 2000. P. B"guin and P. Rabardel, Designing for instrument-mediated activity. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 12 (2000), pp. 173-191

• Boethel, Martha and K. Victoria Dimock (1999). Constructing Knowledge with Technology: A Review of the Literature, SEDL, html/PDF/booklet

• Ploetzner R., Dillenbourg P., Praier M. & Traum D. (1999) Learning by explaining to oneself and to others. In P. Dillenbourg (Ed) Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. (pp. 103-121). Oxford: Elsevier