Publications

Bridging the Gap between Object-oriented and Logic Programming

Timothy Koschmann et al. — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:33:52 PDT

A description is given of an interface that was developed between Loops and Xerox Quintus Prolog. Loops is an extension to the Xerox AI environment to support object-oriented programming; Xerox Quintus Prolog is a version of Prolog that runs on Xerox Lisp machines. Such a bridge enables all the support tools of both environments to be accessed, and degradation of performance that occurs when one language is implemented top of another is avoided. The interface has three layers. At the lowest level, a set of Prolog predicates gives the Prolog programmer access to Loops objects. This lowest level is the bridge from Prolog to Loops. At the next level, programming tools in the Loops environment let object methods be defined in Prolog. At the highest level, the Prolog programmer can treat Prolog clauses as Loops objects that can be manipulated outside the Prolog database. Each layer can be used independently.

Analyzing the Emergence of a Learning Issue in a Problem-based Learning Meeting

Timothy Koschmann et al. — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:33:51 PDT

Though much has been published concerning the intended or realized benefits of participating in a Problem-Based curriculum, we know little about what participants (faculty and students) actually do when they say they are doing Problem-Based Learning (PBL). The current paper is part of an ongoing to effort to apply methods borrowed from studies of discourse to understanding PBL as a form of enacted practice. In particular, the paper provides a description of the interaction within a PBL tutorial meeting leading to the generation of a Learning Issue (LI). We introduce the term Knowledge Assessment Segment (KAS) for important stretches of interaction during which participants identify learning issues. We present a detailed analysis of a selected segment. Specific features discussed include: how the group's perspective on a topic changes over the course of the discussion, the tutor's role in providing "scaffolding" for student reasoning, and the group's incorporation of "thinking about thinking." The purpose of descriptive studies of this sort is to enhance our understanding of what it means to do Problem-Based Learning.

On the Universality of Recursion

Timothy Koschmann — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:39:21 PDT

“Can You See the Cystic Artery Yet?” A Simple Matter of Trust

Timothy Koschmann et al. — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:39:21 PDT

As our contribution to this special issue, we examine how understandings of objects are talked and worked into being within concerted action. We will argue that formal procedure can serve as a resource in this regard. Procedures make relevant certain kinds of objects, objects that serve as its materials, tools, end-products, agents, etc. Our analysis traces all references to a particular object, the cystic artery, over the course of a surgery conducted at a teaching hospital. The arrangements of the operating theatre impose certain constraints on how the key participants, a surgeon in training, a faculty member and a medical student, were able to display and detect particular features of their material environment. Also, because of the surgery’s status as a ‘site of instruction,’ a special set of accountabilities came into play during its performance. Talk was frequently seen to do both instructional and instrumental work. The team members were called upon to interpret the visual field in congruent ways and, more specifically, to strike agreements as to what would serve as salient objects for the purposes of the work at hand. The identification of the cystic artery was called into question and its thingness had to be renegotiated. We draw on Garfinkel’s notion of ‘trust’ to describe the prospective/retrospective processes of referring to what comes to be the cystic-artery-for-the-purposes-of-this-surgery. We argue that procedure both determines and is determined by its objects.

"What are we missing?" Usability’s Indexical Ground

Alan Zemel et al. — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:43:41 PDT

In this paper, we describe how usability provides the indexical ground upon which design work in a surgery is achieved. Indexical and deictic referential practices are used 1) to constitute participation frameworks and work sites in an instructional surgery and 2) to encode and manage participants’ differential access to the relevancies and background knowledge required for the achievement of a successful surgical outcome. As a site for both learning and work, the operating room afforded us the opportunity to examine how usability, which is a critical design consideration, can be used as a resource for learning in interaction. In our detailed analysis of the interaction among participants (both co-present and projected) we sought to describe a particular case of how usability was produced as a relevant consideration for surgical education in the operating room. In doing so, we demonstrate a set of members’ methods by which actors worked to establish and provide for the relevance of the anticipated needs of projected users as part of developing an understanding of their current activity.

Optical Pulsars and Black Arrows: Discoveries as Occasioned Productions

Timothy Koschmann et al. — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:43:40 PDT

The current paper represents a methodological proposal. It seeks to address the question of how one might recognize a discovery as a discovery without knowing in advance what is available to be discovered. We propose a solution and demonstrate it using data from a study previously reported by Roschelle (1992). Roschelle investigated two students’ discovery of certain abstract features of Newtonian mechanics while working within a computer-based microworld, the Envisioning Machine. We employ an approach we term discovery-as-occasioned-production to re-examine his data. Such an approach proceeds stepwise from the identification of some matter discovered, working backwards to see just where that matter entered the conversation and, then, finally, tracing from that point forward to illuminate how the proposal for a possible discovery was ultimately transformed into a discovery achieved. The notion of “evident vagueness,” borrowed from Garfinkel, Lynch, and Livingston’s (1981) account of the discovery of an optical pulsar, emerges as an important feature of our analysis. Following Garfinkel (2002), we present our findings as a “tutorial problem” and offer a suggestion for how a program of practice studies in the learning sciences might be pursued.

Learner Articulation as Interactional Achievement: Studying the Conversation of Gesture

Timothy Koschmann et al. — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:25:17 PDT

Studied under a variety of names (e.g., self-explanation, self-directed and generative summarization), it is now a well-accepted finding that the process of learner articulation contributes to new learning. While prior research has focused on measuring the effects of various forms of articulation on learning outcomes, this report focuses on how such articulation maybe accomplished, moment to moment and turn by turn. Specifically, it documents some of the ways in which participants use their bodies and, in particular, their hands while displaying what they know. It presents fine-grained analyses of three videotaped fragments of naturally occurring interaction among medical teachers and students participating in tutorial meetings in a Problem-Based Learning curriculum. Within these three exhibits, we find evidence of recipient design with regard to gesture production and recipient response with reference to its performance. We also find evidence of gesture re-use as a mechanism for cohesion across turns at talk and as a display of mutual understanding. This paper represents a preliminary step toward a more general program of research focusing on sense making practices in learning settings. Extending our understanding of how such practices are accomplished interactionally is a crucial step toward eventually being able to give an adequate account of what makes any exemplary form of instruction effective.

Formulating the Triangle of Doom

Timothy Koschmann et al. — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:13:05 PDT

Considerable attention has been paid in the CA literature to the glossing practices through which participants in conversation formulate who they are, what they are talking about, where the things they are talking about are located, and so forth. There are, of course, gestural glossing practices as well. For any concept or category presented gesturally, however, there is a range of possibilities from which a particular formulation may be adopted on any actual occasion of use. Identifying alternative formulations serves as a useful analytic exercise for exploring the pragmatic consequences of a produced gesture. In our own research, we have been studying the practices through which surgeons provide instruction while performing surgeries in a teaching hospital. We describe here a particular anatomy lesson produced during a surgery. The attending surgeon uses his hands and arms to gesturally construct a representation of a specific anatomic region (“the Triangle of Doom”) for the benefit of two medical students viewing and participating in the surgery. Employing the structure of Schegloff’s analysis of place formulations, we conduct an analysis of the attending’s gestural formulation. We will show how analyzing a particular gesture in this way illuminates both the intricate ways in which the gesture is tied to its context of production and the exquisite specificity of the gesture itself.