Analysing educational dialogue around shared artefacts in technology-mediated contexts: a new coding framework

Abstract

Multimodal interactions that incorporate technology use can support rich new forms of educational dialogue that highlight differences between participants’ perspectives and make reasoning processes more explicit. Learning with technology is mediated by digitally represented knowledge artefacts that participants construct together and manipulate through dialogue. However, there is a need for research into the methods by which researchers and practitioners can understand the learning taking place in such complex environments where verbal and nonverbal interactions with technology are inter-connected and entangled with activities and material learning resources. This paper addresses that need. It offers a critical discussion of the underlying theory and presents a new 13-category coding scheme, ‘Tech-SEDA’. This is the first public version of a systematic, research-informed and practical tool for analysing verbal and nonverbal dialogic communication at the micro- or meso- level across diverse educational settings. Application is illustrated with examples of dialogic interaction across diverse technology contexts by learners located in classrooms or remotely–including online discussions, 3-dimensional modelling in augmented reality, software apps on tablets, Knowledge Forum, Scratch programming, interactive whiteboards, and more. The paper considers the methodological issues arising in capturing dynamic multimodal dialogue and in identifying the learning taking place.