Technology Affordances for Intersubjective Meaning Making: A Research Agenda for CSCL

Abstract

Now well into its second decade, the field of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) appears healthy, while encompassing a diversity of topics of study, methodologies, and representatives of various research communities. It is an appropriate time to ask: what central questions can integrate our work into a coherent field? This paper proposes the study of technology affordances for intersubjective meaning-making as an integrating research agenda for CSCL. A brief survey of epistemologies of collaborative learning and forms of computer support for that learning characterize the field to be integrated and motivate the proposal. A hybrid of experimental, descriptive and design methodologies is proposed in support of this agenda. A working definition of intersubjective meaning-making as joint composition of interpretations of a dynamically evolving context is provided, and used to propose a framework around which dialogue between analytic approaches can take place.